


Recognition

by riotcow



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, Magic Made Them Do It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:22:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2098848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riotcow/pseuds/riotcow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione Granger and Severus Snape come under a geas from an ancient, mysterious force called Recognition that draws them together, whether they like it or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of Recognition belongs to Richard and Wendy Pini, of Elfquest fame. The Potterverse belongs to J.K. Rowling.

Pure, clean, unclotted blood. Beautiful, rich, fertile soil and rubies and garnets, earth brown and glittering gemstone red. Not in a rush, as she'd expected, but a steady drip, oozing its way in a leisurely fashion from her innermost tender core. Taking its time. Announcing its arrival slyly. Demanding acknowledgment.

The other girls took her up to the Astronomy Tower. She gazed up at the Moon, her own blood on her outstretched hands. The other girls weren't giggling, as she'd expected they would. They were solemn witnesses, their smooth teenaged faces reflecting incongruous wisdom and patience as they formed their little circle beneath the Moon and offered up their new sister to her fickle charms. They all owed allegiance to the Moon, their Mother, who winked down at them and licked the blood from the trembling fingers of her newest daughter in a pregnant, dignified silence.

Hermione Granger had finally gotten her period. 

* * *

 Severus Snape cursed the moon roundly.

The powdered dragon scale had to be added to the Never Say Never potion under a new moon, which tonight was supposed to have been. He'd dragged his softly simmering cauldron under a high, tiny window that would have allowed him to see that inky blackness in the night sky where the moon should have been hiding shyly. These things were always worth checking at Hogwarts; the night sky didn't always behave as Snape thought it should. And indeed, he cursed roundly when he glanced out the window and saw the fat belly of a full moon gazing back at him tauntingly. It was supposed to be a new moon tonight... he couldn't continue the potion, which he'd been working on for ten days now, under a full moon.

One of the female brats must have started her menses tonight. That was usually the explanation when a full moon looked down on Hogwarts on a night when it didn't belong there. Snape suspected sourly that the whole lot of them were probably up in the Astronomy Tower, doing their little witchy rituals and anthropomorphizing the moon. Not that he or any of the teachers would dare interrupt that little party.

No, he'd learned that lesson that hard way. He frowned once again at the moon and cast a stasis spell over his potion, hoping that it wouldn't spoil by the night of the next new moon, assuming that the moon was behaving herself by then.

_Itself_ , he corrected silently.

* * *

 Hermione pushed some potatoes around her plate and smiled secretly to herself.

Ron and Harry had stopped talking Quidditch and were regarding her with concern, but she'd not yet noticed. Harry cleared his throat, and Hermione glanced up from her stew.

"You okay, `Mione?" asked Harry in low tones.

Hermione smiled reassuringly at her two friends. She'd been awfully quiet all morning, not prattling on about schoolwork or exams at all. She just felt... secretive. And her two best friends were boys. They certainly couldn't understand what it meant for a witch to get her menses. Young wizards were notoriously oblivious about these things.

"I'm fine, Harry, thanks," she responded in her prim voice, spearing a carrot and bringing it delicately to her mouth. Ron opened his mouth, clearly ready to go back to discussing Quidditch now that they'd done their filial duty by noticing Hermione's silence, but was interrupted by Harry.

"Do you think you're ready for the Charms test next week?" he asked Hermione casually.

Ron's mouth snapped shut in surprise and he regarded Harry with alarm. "Aw, Harry, what are you doing, going and asking `Mione about studying? Now we'll hear it," he whined.

Hermione just smiled at Ron, which made him even more nervous. Normally she'd get all prissy over a comment like that. "I think I'll probably be adequately prepared by then. You think you'll be ready?" she responded, as if Ron hadn't spoken.

Harry shrugged with one arm. "I guess so. Maybe we could all study together a bit on Sunday, though. I know I could use your help with the Etiquette charms, and so could Ron."

"My Etiquette charms are perfect, thank you very much, you cum-stained shit-licking misbegotten syphilitic whore," Ron protested jokingly, and the three of them laughed together, Hermione a bit scandalized. Ron's last try at a politeness charm had ended with shy Beatrice Bottingstock producing some of the most creative expletives that Hermione had ever heard, which Ron had been struggling to memorize while trying to look properly contrite and concerned over having miscast the spell on his partner.

"Wow, Snape looks sour today," Harry pointed out suddenly, his eyes moving past his friends to the head table, where the Potions Master had just stalked to his seat. "We're in for it in -- `Mione?"

Hermione's eyes followed Harry's to the head table, and when she saw the tall, imposing figure of her least-favorite teacher sweeping into his high-backed chair, a jolt of purest agony shook her body from the spine outward. Suddenly Hermione lurched gracelessly out of her seat and started moving toward the head table as if being jerked along on puppet strings, feeling something utterly foreign and irresistibly compelling and beautiful and agonizing and sweet and stabbing coursing through her every vein with insistent, electric intensity...

... _longing_ , whispered a voice...

"`Mione?" queried Ron and Harry, more loudly and in tandem this time.

* * *

Snape heard that useless twit Trelawny gasp beside him, and that was why he looked up in time to see Hermione Granger advancing on the head table, looking for all the world like she was under a poorly-coordinated Imperius curse, an expression of pain and confusion on her face and her glazed eyes locked on... him.

As soon as his eyes met hers, a huge, powerful fist reached into his gut and seized a handful of his stomach and intestines and began to squeeze. Snape felt his body temperature rise a good five degrees, his breath start coming in ragged gasps, and a painful, throbbing erection sprang immediately to life beneath his robes. Suddenly he was visited by a vivid vision of seizing Hermione Granger, dragging her to the floor, jacking her robes and that stupid schoolgirl pinafore she was wearing up around her now-womanly hips, and driving his erection into her body with all the force that he was capable of mustering.

Snape dropped his spoon, which clattered loudly against his soup bowl. Time was standing still for him, but some panicked voice in the back of his brain insisted that he had to get away from her, now.

Snape fled.

By now all eyes were on the bolting professor and possessed-seeming student. Dumbledore murmured something to McGonagall, who swept out of her seat, around the head table, and gathered Hermione in her voluminous robes. The stern Transfigurations Mistress started to push the girl back down between the student tables, out of the main door of the hall, all the while glaring at the gawking students and maintaining a protective posture.

Dumbledore, for his part, stood and swept his eyes over the assembled student body once. As his gaze moved over each of them, they felt suddenly embarrassed to be openly staring at the mysterious drama that had just unfolded. Each returned his or her eyes to the heavy beef stew silently, resolving to act in a more dignified way in the future, as Dumbledore turned and followed Snape out of the teacher's door. Well, all of them except two, who had a personal stake in the strange behavior of their classmate. With a single glance between them, Ron and Harry rose and followed McGonagall and Hermione out of the back of the hall.

* * *

Snape had, of course, retreated to the dungeons.

He sat in his office, elbows on his knees, head hanging forward, gasping for self-control. His over-stimulated brain had sorted out what was happening to him almost immediately, and he'd just had time to see Minerva McGonagall escorting the stupid girl in the opposite direction as he fled, which meant that she had probably figured it out too. Undoubtedly Dumbledore had, which meant that the serene headmaster was probably in the dungeons already, waiting just outside the door to give Snape enough time to collect himself.

Snape forced himself to sit up straight, ran his fingers once through his greasy hair, schooled his features back to impassivity, and motioned for the door to swing open. Sure enough, Albus Dumbledore entered as if he'd just strolled up to the aperture. Well, now Snape felt a little better, at least. His headmaster wasn't the only one who could play the knew-you-were-there game.

"Albus."

"Severus," returned the old wizard, settling into the chair opposite Snape's.

"You've figured it out. Everyone has." It was a statement, not a question, delivered flatly.

Dumbledore cocked his head. "The students certainly have not. But I feel confident that any of the staff who fail to ascertain what's occurred will be suitably informed by those who have."

Snape's mouth tightened. He would be laughed at, made fun of. As if things wouldn't be bad enough without the amusement of the other teachers.

"They won't laugh, Severus. This is a serious situation."

"I can still feel her, you know." He rolled his eyes upward, as if searching for her through the layers of stone. "She's terrified and confused and very, very disgusted."

Dumbledore sighed heavily, and Snape refocused his eyes on his old mentor. "Has this ever happened before? Between a student and a teacher?"

Dumbledore sat back in his chair and folded his hands sagely. "Not to my knowledge, or I would have been looking for the signs. It would seem that Miss Granger achieved womanhood yesterday and took us all somewhat by surprise."

Snape suddenly brought his fist down on the arm of his chair. "Albus, I simply _can't_ do this. For a variety of reasons."

"You simply don't have a choice, my friend. It would be dangerous for both of you to resist. At much as you may not care for this, you understand that there is a reason why it happens."

Snape snorted.

"Severus, Recognition is a rare and wondrous thing. I understand that it's inconvenient and unwanted, but fighting it would be purest folly. I will help you find ways to control it as best you can, so that you and Miss Granger can make some sort of reasoned decision about how to go about this, but I fear that in the end it will not be denied."

"She's, what, fourteen?" Snape queried, his voice dripping with derision.

"Now. She won't always be fourteen."

The Potions Master looked interested. "Is there some way to... stave it off, for a while? Until she's finished her schooling?"

"So that she can then ship off to the other side of the world, and you two ignore it through distance? You know that won't work, Severus. And I doubt that we could postpone the effects for four years."

"Then I'll have to leave now."

The aged headmaster sighed in exasperation. "Oh, Severus, you've read the texts on Recognition. What will happen if you just leave and never see her again?"

"What am I supposed to do, Albus?" demanded Snape, scowling. "You want me to take a fourteen-year-old student to my bed? I mean, what are you suggesting here, old man?"

At this, Dumbledore could not restrain himself from a chuckle, despite the darkening resentment on his Potions Master's face. "No, I'm not suggesting that. Clearly, we will have to manage the effects as best we can until Miss Granger is, say, sixteen. We'll arrange for her to have a tutor in Potions, both until then and after. It wouldn't be proper for you to instruct her."

"Sixteen? That's still a child."

"According to her body and its mistress the Moon, Miss Granger stopped being a child yesterday. Recognition seems to be unconcerned with our self-imposed laws."

"I'll not do it, Albus, I won't. You know a ch--a ch... you know what will have to come of this!"

His eyes twinkling infuriatingly, Dumbledore smiled benevolently as Snape choked on his words.

"Actual conception can be held off much longer than the more... primal... effects of Recognition. Of course, you two won't be free of the drive for each other at least until you conceive."

Snape's pale face went even whiter as Dumbledore spoke. "You intend to let this happen in your school, you mad old bat?"

The amusement faded, and Dumbledore looked a bit weary. "In all truth, Severus, I would prefer that it did not. I am not going to send Hermione away - we both know that Harry will need her. And I am not willing to lose one of my best professors. And we both know full well that the only wizards and witches who have successfully resisted Recognition died of the effort. What would you suggest I do, under the circumstances?"

Snape's shoulders slumped momentarily, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't know, Albus. I don't know." 

* * *

"So I'm going to feel like - _that_ \- every time I see _Snape_ unless I, uh, _sleep_ with him? This is absurd!"

The headmaster smiled reassuringly at Hermione, and McGonagall patted the girl's hand.

"Not necessarily. There are some options here for you, if you think that you're up to them. None are pleasant, Miss Granger, but some are manageable."

Hermione's brain was spinning. The effects of whatever had happened didn't go away as soon as she was out of Snape's presence. She could still feel him, in the castle, several floors below where she was now. She was just somehow distressingly aware of him. He was angry and dismayed and trying desperately to hide it from her. Which meant that her feelings of disgust and terror were probably equally transparent to him. And the strange pervasive, well, longing, that the very thought of him created in her bones and cells and gut. Hermione shuddered, appalled. Snape knew that she wanted him. Her shame was hot and immediate.

Of course, she could also feel that he was aroused, and fighting it. Her half-fevered brain kept trying to generate imagery of what that might look like, which stirred other feelings in turn. She was so confused.

McGonagall was explaining this plan to her. This totally inadequate plan that still essentially ended with her in bed with her surly, hateful Potions Master, and was the best thing that the luminaries of the wizarding world could come up with, to try to spare her dignity as much as possible. Which wasn't very much, evidently.

"When the spell is lifted, all of the restrained impulses of several years of thwarted Recognition will be quite overwhelming to you. The hope is by then that you will be better able to manage those impulses than you are now."

"And this will get me through to graduation?" she asked, near tears.

Dumbledore and McGonagall exchanged glances, and the old wizard answered in a voice full of sympathy. "It would be dangerous to try to put it off for that long, Hermione. We are considering two years to be possible."

At that she set her jaw stubbornly. "No way. I've got to graduate," she insisted, amazed at her own gall for openly defying the headmaster to his face.

McGonagall cut back in. "Miss Granger, you must understand that to even attempt to use this spell for two years is putting both you and Professor Snape at risk. Four years would result in considerable trauma for you when the spell finally failed. And you will graduate, even if we lift the spell when you're sixteen."

Hermione's eyes moved pleadingly from her Transfigurations professor to the headmaster and back. Both looked like they wanted to offer her a better option, but could not.

"I'll think about it," Hermione announced angrily.

* * *

**_Nearly four years later, several months before graduation:_ **

Of course, they were all again in the great hall, this time at dinner, when the tired, frayed spell finally sputtered and failed.

McGonagall's eyes went wide as she searched out Dumbledore's gaze at the table. The two of them had cast and maintained the spell, and they both felt it unravel. The headmaster was looking back in alarm, and with a subtle gesture of his chin, motioned for the old witch to see to their student as he turned to Snape.

McGonagall looked across the hall to see Hermione sitting in stillness, her two friends looking concerned as they tried to speak to her. She rose and approached the Gryffindor table to collect the girl and get her away from her classmates.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Dumbledore delivering the warning to the Potions Master, who was rising even before the words were out and heading out the teacher's door at a clip.

By the time McGonagall drew even with her three troublemakers, Hermione was trembling, tears running silently down her face. For the second time, McGonagall drew the curly-haired Gryffindor under her arm in front of all her assembled schoolmates and escorted the stricken girl out of the great hall, ignoring the concerned questions from Potter and Weasley. Again, she led Hermione out the main doors that the students used.

But this time, once out of sight of the other students, McGonagall set her mouth in an unhappy line and led the girl directly to the dungeons.


	2. Her Third and Fourth Years

**_Four years earlier:_ **

That very first evening, she'd allowed them to cast both the spell that would suppress the effects of Recognition and a modified version of Obliviate on her. She just wanted them to do it all before she saw Snape again. She was absolutely mortified by the way that she'd acted that day at lunch, and couldn't imagine facing him, knowing that they were both driven by some sick, mysterious mating spell to copulate and produce children, and that attempts to ignore it for too long would lead to madness and death.

Bloody hell, she couldn't even imagine trying to explain it to Harry and Ron.

In the aftermath of the spell, she'd blinked up at Dumbledore and McGonagall. She had a sense that something had just happened, but she didn't know what, and oddly, she didn't feel all that curious about it.

"You've just had a bit of a spell as a result of overexerting yourself in Transfiguration this morning," McGonagall informed her in characteristically crisp tones. "We should get you back to Gryffindor tower for some rest, and because Messieurs Potter and Weasley will be concerned about you after the scene that you made at lunch."

"I made a scene?" Hermione inquired vaguely.

"Yes, Miss Granger, but don't concern yourself over that. Your friends know full well how ridiculously hard you drive yourself. Now come along." 

* * *

The tension in his body as he waited for his first Gryffindor class since the -- the -- _incident_ , or whatever the bloody hell it was, was enough to make him feel nauseous. Dumbledore had told him that the girl had allowed them to cast the suppression charm and Obliviate both, so she wouldn't even remember what had happened. Snape was figuring she'd probably have been willing to beg for those spells. She had been thoroughly revolted by the idea of being irresistibly compelled to mate with her greasy Potions Master... he wasn't just being self-depricating again, as Dumbledore had implied; No, he _knew_ she'd been revolted. He'd been able to feel it.

It hadn't done much for his state of mind. He was angry enough about being subject to the whim of some foolish and entirely unexplained wizarding force. He was even angrier that the mate that would inevitably be foisted upon him was a snotty slip of a girl young enough to be his daughter. But while he was certainly revolted by the idea of bedding a barely-pubescent child, he felt no... particular... revulsion toward Hermione Granger herself. Dislike, certainly. But not revulsion.

Evidently that lack of feeling was not mutual. And his head spun at the plurality of negatives in that concept. And why the hell did he care, anyway? It wasn't as if before this new evidence, he'd been entertaining the fancy that all his female students thought he was some sort of sex symbol.

He sat stonily at his desk as the brats filed in. He heard Weasley's annoying tones carrying from the corridor and steeled himself. Resolutely he continued grading parchments, not looking up, although he was certain that she was coming into the room now. The suppression spell cast on her significantly dampened his awareness of her, but he could still feel her proximity as his blood began to heat in his veins.

_Don't look up, you fool. Don't look up at her._

Her voice drifted across the room to him. Hermes' staff! He should have allowed Dumbledore to arrange for tutoring, as the dottering old fool had suggested. The Potions Master's groin tightened instantly and he curled his long fingers around the edge of the desk, determined not to pant like a dog in front of his class.

He was going to do this, damn it, whatever it took.

"Open your texts to the Polar Opposites potion on page 517!" he barked into the instantly-silent classroom, and noticed even his Slytherins looking taken aback by the undisguised menace in his voice. The only sound was that of pages turning as Snape finally allowed his gaze to fleetingly pass the girl by as it swept across the room.

As his eyes touched hers, he apparently stirred her from some sort of reverie. She'd been gazing at him with a perplexed look on her face instead of opening her text, but at his glance she shook her head suddenly and pulled out her book.

So the suppression spell would work, but not perfectly.

And that did nothing to alleviate his own misery.

* * *

Hermione allowed Ron to push her gently back against the arm of the couch. This was the third time that she'd allowed him to kiss her, and the previous two she'd soundly rebuffed his attempts at petting her. But this time, stiffening her resolve, she accommodated his subtle maneuvers meant to get her into a more horizontal position.

The other fourth-year girls talked about nothing but boys and snogging. And after the Yule Ball, Ron Weasley's interest in her had become undeniable for both of them. She liked Ron; really, she loved him. And he was becoming a good-looking young man. And things with Victor hadn't worked out so hot. And she was anxious to feel normal, and normal girls wanted to kiss boys in dark corners of Hogwarts.

Why didn't she feel anything? Or rather, she felt _something_... but it wasn't this.

She was certainly flattered by how excited Ron was. Who would have thought that the uncouth, flame-haired Ronald Weasley, the Boy Who Lived With His Foot in His Mouth, would begin to develop class as they grew older?

"Hermione," he breathed hotly, and she smiled into his neck. Around the time that he noticed that she was a girl, he'd stopped calling her by that unwelcome nickname and started addressing her as she preferred. It was sweet, really. Harry had even caught on and followed suit. Sure, they called her `Mione when they were trying to rile her up, but she had some unpleasant nicknames for them too, and what was a little infuriating baiting between friends?

Ron had started out a little over-eager, but he'd caught on fast to her cues and slowed down for her. Now he was gently kissing the side of her neck, and Hermione sighed in what she hoped sounded like contentment. She ran her hands through his hair, enjoying its feel. He was stroking the swell of her breast, and she tried arching up a little bit in encouragement. It did feel good, after all. And Ron's touch was gentle, and he was paying attention to her feedback, and obviously working hard not to be too insistent. She felt safe, and loved.

And then it happened again. Ron shifted, moving more of his weight over her, which felt, well, sort of exciting and sexy. A little thrill shot through her. And suddenly she was visited by the image of Severus Snape moving above her in this intimate tableau.

Hermione whimpered a bit in surprise and screwed her eyes shut, trying to get the absurd idea out of her head. What was wrong with her? Ron noticed and pulled back, slowing down again, thinking her response was to him.

"Ron," she breathed, reminding herself who she was really with. The boy who half the Gryffindor girls would have given their wands for a shot at. And here she was thinking of Snape, of all the bizarre people.

Not that she disliked Snape, exactly. But Snape kissing a girl? It was just... unthinkable.

Except that she was thinking it.

Ron had changed tactics and hitched Hermione's shirt up just a bit, and was dragging his warm fingers across her stomach in a teasing, sensuous touch.

"I don't want to... be disrespectful, Hermione," Ron murmured softly. "But I want you so bad."

She responded by raising her mouth to his, inviting another kiss. Trying, really trying, to do this right.

"Pardon me, children."

Both Gryffindors froze as the Potions Master's silkiest voice cut through their passion. Or, rather, through Ron's passion and Hermione's determination.

Ron sat back slowly and turned, helping Hermione to sit up as he did. The redhead looked a bit green, but Hermione's heart was hammering full-tilt in her throat.

And now she was wet. Suddenly, inexplicably wet. She reluctantly turned to face Snape. He was standing not three feet away, looming over them, arms folded among the voluminous folds of his robes, and the look on his face...

It occurred to her that she'd never seen him look so icily calm, not in all the years of Potions with Neville Longbottom, not in all of her adventures with the boy whom Snape hated, Harry Potter. Which meant that she'd never seen him so angry.

He was positively furious.

"While I understand," he began softly, eyes glittering, "that you two consider yourselves far above the rules of this institution by virtue of your association with our resident hero, I can quite confidently assure you that I am not in agreement."

Hermione's voice stuck in her throat, and she trembled. Ron looked intimidated but resentful as he held his tongue.

"I can think of no legitimate reason whatsoever why I should be happening upon fifteen-year-old _children_ \--" he spat the word with true venom, "--on the brink of intercourse in the halls of this school, like a couple of mangy street urchins copulating thoughtlessly in the street."

Hermione cringed, tears filling her eyes even as her guts liquified in electric arousal, and Ron's eyes went wide. But Snape was evidently not finished.

"This institution is the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in Europe. Do you unmannered brats even realize that? Only the finest and most promising students are sorted into the Houses of Hogwarts, and they are expected to uphold that trust which has been placed in them. In short, to behave like people of moral fiber and reasonable wit."

Snape took another step, and was truly towering over them now as the pair tried in vain to shrink into the couch itself. "Mr. Weasley, I would expect you to understand. Your family has always distinguished themselves by the most honorable of comportment, and your family name has come to mean much among the wizarding societies of this country, in spite of a lack of aristocratic pedigree... no small accomplishment, that. And yet, you would cast away all that hard-earned esteem in order to rut in the halls of the school to which your parents have struggled to send you."

Ron paled even further and actually began to look guilty in addition to angry.

"And Miss Granger..." Hermione visibly quailed as he turned his enraged, piercing gaze on her. Suddenly, his tone dropped to a razor-edged near-whisper, infused with deep loathing as it drilled into her. "Well. Miss Granger. I suppose I expected no better of you."

All of her sick and unwelcome arousal finally fled as his words hit home like a stiletto dagger driven directly into her soft belly. She fought not to double over in actual physical pain.

And with that, Severus Snape turned and walked away from them. Hermione was sure that he was not out of earshot by the time that she could no longer contain her sobs.

* * *

He never should have tracked them down, of course.

Snape stalked along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, occasionally stooping to harvest some of the materials that he regularly collected here. Surely Dumbledore knew of his wildly inappropriate actions by now.

None of the teachers really minded the students doing what teenagers would do in corners. If anyone got too obvious about it, they had to get caught, a few points deducted, to make sure that they started exercising appropriate discretion again. His comments had been entirely, entirely unfair. Well, they'd been tailored to wound. And wound, he suspected, they had.

It'd only been a year, and already he could tell the difference as the suppression charm began to fade. Now, even at a distance, he could sometimes sense her most prominent emotion. A few times before tonight, he'd suspected that she might be with a boy. Kissing a boy.

But tonight he'd _known_ , goddammit. He'd even known it would be Weasley. He didn't know how he knew that part - it wasn't like he could read her mind - but he'd been absolutely certain. Weasley. That little self-absorbed redheaded prat, pawing at her budding body and slobbering on her eager little mouth--

Fuck.

Snape's vision actually went red, as it had when he'd confronted the brats, and he suddenly slammed his fist into a tree. Bright pain blossomed, momentarily taking the edge off the anger, but the tree remained unimpressed by his display. Mollified, he continued on his way, though he was sure this unhealthy rumination would eventually see him driving his fist into some other unoffending inanimate object.

As he returned to the castle, he felt thoroughly wrung out, as if he'd just come back from one of Voldemort's meetings. Hermione Granger was alternately weeping and raging up in Gryffindor tower, but at least she wasn't tucked into anyone's lap at the moment.

"Albus," he greeted the Headmaster tiredly at the gates of the castle.

"Severus. I thought you might join me for a nightcap," mused the old man.

"Is this to be a lecture about my earlier inanity?" inquired Snape bluntly, too tired to dance around the issue.

"While I admit to having considered it," Dumbledore replied lightly, "I thought I'd actually opt for the 'soothing company without any mention of your problems' approach."

At this, Snape only grunted, and trudged along behind the seemingly-omniscient old wizard.


	3. Her Fifth and Sixth Years

"Ron, don't be an utter prat. You don't really want to break up with Hermione!"

Ron Weasley, star Quidditch keeper of Hogwarts and tall heartthrob of the Gryffindor dorm, regarded his famous best friend with frustration in his eyes. "Of course I don't _want_ to, Harry! But I don't know what else to do."

The two sat in a corner of the Three Broomsticks, nursing butterbeers and trying to evade Harry Potter's many fans. Hermione had gone off to the bookstore and was planning to join them later.

"She's not in love with me," Ron continued bitterly. "She never has been, and nothing I can do is going to change that. I understand that now."

"C'mon, Ron," Harry responded with some dejection. "Hermione loves you. And you're crazy about her."

"She loves me like she loves you, Harry," Ron repeated in morose tones, picking idly at the tabletop. "I can't make her feel any differently, and neither can she. She's been trying for a year and a half. It's time I let her off the hook."

"Well, why shouldn't she be in love with you?" Harry demanded plaintively. "I mean, half the girls in our dorm would give anything to be in her place."

"That's true, Ron," Hermione said sadly as she suddenly joined them at the table.

Harry looked uncomfortable and Ron just sighed. With a worried glance between his two best friends, the mop-haired Boy Who Lived suddenly become the Boy Who Tactfully Made Himself Scarce. Hermione slid into his place, looking at Ron seriously. The redhead somehow managed to summon a weak smile for his childhood love.

"Don't you think it's time we admitted it, Hermione?" he asked, with all the wounded dignity of a teenaged boy.

She sighed heavily and found that she couldn't meet his eyes. "I really want it to work out between us," she insisted, hating the sound of her usual mantra, which hadn't gotten them much of anywhere so far.

He shrugged. "Yeah, well. Me too. But it isn't going to, love, and frankly, I'm getting tired of it."

Hermione nodded a little and said nothing. She gazed over Ron's shoulder in the direction of the bar, while Ron, one last time, watched her expression with his last faint spark of hope. He saw nothing there; nothing for him, anyway. After a few moments, he gave up for the last time, and left the table with no more words exchanged.

Thus was the undramatic end of an undramatic relationship... well, undramatic for Hermione, at least. Her heart ached for Ron, but there was nothing that she could do to make him feel better.

She felt Snape's eyes upon her. She hadn't even seen him when she walked in, but she knew he was there, and even knew which corner of the room he was dwelling in. And she knew that, as usual, he was covertly watching her. She was certain that he was somehow satisfied by witnessing the anti-climactic conclusion of her first long-term attempt at romance. She didn't know what the surly Potions Master had had against her relationship with Ron Weasley, but anyone with half a brain could see that he had it in for them.

She felt angry, remembering the ridiculous little lecture he'd given them the night he caught them in the nook. Why the hell should the sour old bat care who she dated? She had the most absurd notion that that bizarre interlude had driven a wedge between her and Ron, was the source of some unbreachable barrier that kept her from making contact with her adoring suitor.

Her gaze sought him out in the shadows... though she couldn't see his face, she somehow knew their eyes were locked. She nodded curtly in acknowledgment of his triumph and, with a bitter taste in her mouth, took her own exit of the inn. 

* * *

"Miss Granger," tiny Professor Flitwick had piped as she made her way toward the door after her fifth-year Charms class, so she had stayed behind.

The professor fussed his way over to her where she stood, balancing her armload of books and smiling down at him. "Yes, Professor?"

"I know it's early in the year to be choosing your final project for my course, but I wanted to make sure to get to you before that overachieving Granger determination had you set on a topic. There's something in particular that I'd like to see you research this year."

Hermione raised her eyebrows in curiosity. "What's that, Professor?" she inquired with significantly more poise than she'd had a mere year ago, her eagerness to discuss a course project evident in her entire demeanor, but tempered from the prissy know-it-all that she had been.

"Well, dear girl, there's a rather forgotten area of study around some ancient phenomena that only seem to happen in the wizarding world, and that most magical folks have well-nigh forgotten in these last centuries," Flitwick chirped innocently, straightening parchments on his desk. "You know, Enmity, Recognition, that sort of thing."

"Enmity? Recognition?" Hermione echoed, fascinated. It was clear from the way he said them that the words were proper nouns.

"See?" His tone was happy. "There are things that not even Hermione Granger has read about! I thought you might like a little more obscure topic to give you a challenge."

"But what are they?" she asked, perplexed.

Flitwick chuckled. "But that would be giving it away! This is supposed to be a challenge, Miss Granger. Do what you do best: research!"

"Oh." The girl's brow was furrowed; this was a rather strange way to choose a course project topic, but she seemed amiable enough. "Okay, Professor Flitwick. I'll do that."

* * *

Hermione didn't know if she was grateful or angry at her Charms Professor's little manipulation.

Well, strike that. Hermione knew exactly what her primary emotion was: she was appalled. She was certain that her intuition was quite correct on this matter. The pieces fell into place easily once she read a bit about Recognition: her intrusive, obsessive thoughts about him. His bizarre protectiveness and jealousy. That's what it was, clearly: jealousy. He couldn't sneak up on her any longer, because she always knew he was coming. And sometimes, now, she knew his mood: brooding or irritated.

Clearly someone had cast a suppression spell. But those always failed within a handful of years, usually with spectacular results. But who had cast it?

It was a few weeks before she remembered Harry and Ron's story about her bizarre behavior one day at lunch, when she had practically charged the head table and Snape had taken off at a dead run. She didn't remember that, but McGonagall had told her that she'd had a "episode" from overexerting herself magically. Hermione, however, remembered chalking it up to the new hormones raging through her body at her very recent menses, and resolving to make sure to get appropriate vitamins for a girl who would be bleeding every month now.

The day after her menses, that had been. Of course. Harry had been confused when she asked him to recall that day, and he'd told her that McGonagall had escorted her out of the hall.

So perhaps McGonagall had cast it. Or knew who did. But did Hermione want to know? Did she, knowing what she did, really want to pursue this?

Because the outcome was clear. But then, the outcome was clear whether she did anything about it or not.

This was, frankly, ridiculous. Hermione tried to imagine being seduced by the Potions Master and came up short. "Miss Granger, I've been thinking about you." No, too cheesy. "Miss Granger, what a lovely... potion... you've produced." She grimaced. "Miss Granger, for your detention you're to report directly to my bed. And none of your lip, you insufferable know-it-all!"

No, all her stray fantasies about him were somehow more primal than that. Ideas about being helplessly pinned beneath that piercing gaze... sweaty clashes in darkened rooms... nails raking over pale skin... flesh pressing insistently against slippery flesh...

Panting, she tried to imagine what would get them from here to there and could not. He was, after all, her professor.

* * *

"Miss Granger, I said that class was dismissed," Snape snapped, not looking up at her.

She'd had a hard time convincing Harry and Ron to leave her alone with Snape. Ron in particular knew that something was not quite right about the way that the greasy git looked at his best friend and ex-girlfriend. In the end, though, she'd drawn herself up and told them that she could damn well take care of herself in a way that made it clear that she'd have no more of their misguided attempts at chivalry, and they'd agreed to leave, though they continued to pester her about her reasons for this mad course of action.

"I think it's time that we arrange for me to be tutored by someone else, Professor Snape," Hermione said evenly, not leaving her chair in the second row.

His head snapped up and his eyes fixed on her suddenly; he nearly bared his teeth at her, she noted. Her breath wanted to quicken in her throat, but she had resolved not to look like a little girl today, so she deliberately fought for calm.

"Excuse me?" he drawled dangerously.

She met his gaze flatly. "By my best estimate, the suppression charm must have been in place for about three years now," she informed him. "It won't last much longer, and already things are becoming inappropriate between us."

He was shut down hard now, and she couldn't read him at all, except to know that his physical proximity was difficult to bear in some vague way.

"I see." Snape studied her, and Hermione felt the blush rising to her cheeks, whether she wanted it or not. The desire in his gaze was hooded but visible, and she wondered how she'd been missing it for the past three years. She felt like a fool that she hadn't figured out exactly why he'd had it in for her relationship with Ron. It must have driven him mad.

 _We're supposed to have a baby?_ she mused wildly.

"I'll speak to the Headmaster about it. He'll have Professor McGonagall take over your instruction in Potions," he told her finally.

Screwing up her nerve, she looked at him with some compassion. "No one's cast a suppression charm on you, have they, sir?"

He closed his eyes briefly as if in pain, then went back to grading. "No, Miss Granger. It was unnecessary. As is your concern over the matter."

Silence reigned for a moment while Hermione considered quitting while she was ahead. Or, at least, not terribly far behind. The very air in the room was charged... if this was Recognition under a suppression charm, she didn't want to think about the unfettered thing. And that was what he was experiencing on his end.

"You're not any happier about this than I am, I know," she said softly. "But I want to know what's going to happen when the charm fails."

He didn't even look up as he delivered his harsh response. "We'll rut like animals in heat, I expect. Until I get you knocked up and then we'll have to figure out where to put the child. And if we're both lucky that'll be the end of it."

Hermione sat in shocked silence for a moment before a single broken sob escaped her. She fled the room in horror, her light feet carrying her back to Gryffindor tower and her best friends. One of whom loved her, and whom she couldn't love in return, all because of the bitter, greasy man in the dungeon who didn't really want her. 

* * *

"Severus." McGonagall bit off each syllable of his name as if it were a particularly bitter chocolate, as she was wont to do.

"Minerva," he returned solemnly, seating himself beside her at the High Table and picking up his goblet immediately.

She lowered her voice and didn't look at him as she spoke. "Albus and I have been talking. The charm is going to go within weeks, Severus, and there's nothing more we can do to patch it together."

He snorted into his cup. "Well, Filius took the liberty of ensuring that she would know what was happening."

McGonagall flushed slightly, and he knew that she'd been in on it with the Charms Master. Probably all the professors had coordinated that little prank together. He grimaced and picked up his fork, spearing a piece of meat savagely.

Her tone became even sharper. "The charm has lasted almost four years, and she's mere months from graduation. She's even had her eighteenth birthday. The situation is much better than we might have hoped for. We can be sure that she'll graduate before she--" and here even the staunch old schoolmistress faltered, searching for words.

"Go ahead, say it," he challenged her in an angry growl. "Before she comes to term with a child."

"Before she comes to term with a child," McGonagall repeated in a steely voice. Madame Hooch, seated on Snape's other side, was pointedly ignoring the low conversation.

For a moment, Snape gave into weakness and massaged the bridge of his nose in exasperation. Suddenly he was aware the Hermione was regarding him from across the room with reluctant, half-angry concern, and he pushed his fatigue and frustration down once again and stoppered it like he would a flask.

"Well, my gratitude for the warning," he snarled. "I'll make sure to keep clean sheets on my bed."

"Really, Severus," McGonagall sniffed. "It's not as if I need the details."

"Oh? And if you don't think about it, dear Minerva, does that mean that something terribly wrong won't actually be happening?" The undisguised bitterness in his voice took even McGonagall aback, and she'd been seeing the man's ugly temper for years.

"Don't be foolish," she snapped as she would at a first-year. "Not the Minister of Magic himself could hold anything against you for what's happening here. It's Recognition, and no one can argue with that."

"I can," he muttered darkly.

Snape was suddenly surprised by McGonagall's bony hand grasping his wrist... hard. He looked over, a measure of respect showing in his eyes. For all of their sniping, the two had over the years come to a certain truce based on regard for each other's formidable talents.

"Hermione Granger is a fine girl, Severus Snape," McGonagall whispered fiercely. "She didn't ask for this any more than you did, but she's dealing with it with rather more dignity, at least. If you must do this thing - and make no bones about it; you must - you can at least do it with honor. There's no reason to treat the young lady like a burden."

Snape was silent for a moment, but didn't attempt to pull away. He acknowledged her with only one brief nod, but let her see in his eyes that he had heard her.


	4. Failure

Hermione tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for Ron to finish reading. Harry had already read the passage and was regarding her strangely, but he also waited for Ron to catch up. Finally the redhead put down the heavy tome and looked up.

"Hermione... are you sure?" he asked grimly.

The Head Girl nodded, looking back and forth between her two best friends. Harry took a deep breath and exchanged glances with the other boy. Lots of emotions were running rampant inside of him, shocked outrage probably foremost among them, but after six years of fighting Voldemort he’d learned to opt for a pragmatic approach. "There's always got to be a way to stop this sort of thing. You know, a quest we can go on or something."

Hermione sighed. "I don't know if that's a good idea. I think I just wanted you two to know, you know, so I didn't have to face it alone."

Ron sat down beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. "I think Harry's right. There should be something we can do... we just have to figure out what."

Hermione shook her head, fighting off the tears that were threatening now that she had someone with whom to share her fear and frustration. "You guys read the passage. There always seems to turn out to be a reason for Recognition. Even if we could find a way to thwart it, the consequences might not be worth it."

Harry sat down on Hermione's other side, and the boys leaned her back into their joint embrace as they thought. "What do you mean, consequences?"

"I mean that documented occurrences of Recognition happen maybe less than once per generation, and the ch-child that they produce always seems to be needed later. There are only about three researchers in the world still actively studying this stuff, but all of them are in agreement about when the last likely case of Recognition occurred. All the signs were observed at the time."

Harry looked at the bushy-haired girl shrewdly, and she nodded. "Yes, Harry: Lily and James Potter. Evidently the world insisted on your presence."

"So, what? This is the universe’s twisted way of producing its next reluctant hero?"

Hermione shrugged a bit. "I dunno. It’s not always that dramatic. Researchers theorize that it happens when there’s something in each of the, uh, parents that, when combined, will produce some sort of special child. It doesn’t have to be saga-worthy, but the child usually contributes something timely and needed to the world of wizardry."

Harry was looking thoughtful, obviously chewing over this new bit of information about his own role in the world, then suddenly remembered the present situation that was bringing this knowledge to light. "So, you’re going to selflessly sacrifice yourself to Snape’s bed in order to make this happen?"

Her eyes went wide at the bluntness of the idea, and Ron paled and tightened his grip on her forearm. She swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. Not able to meet either of their eyes, she choked out, "I guess at this point... I want to." Defensively she added, "I know that sounds crazy."

Harry regarded her seriously, but Ron was looking offended and cut in before the shorter boy could respond. "Oh, Hermione, no! You _can't_ sleep with Snape. Come on!"

Harry interrupted. "Ron! Hermione is under the effect of a very powerful and little-understood spell. I don't think we can help her by telling her that we're disgusted with her for it."

The girl looked at Harry gratefully, then turned back to the redhead with an imploring look on her face. "Ron, please. I know it sounds gross, but you don't understand what it's like."

"Oh, give me a little credit, you two," Ron responded hotly. "This isn't about the fact that I think Snape is a greasy slimebag, which I do, but I know Hermione's a big girl who can take care of herself. My real objection is that I can't imagine him doing right by her. He's going to make this as miserable for her as he can, and I'm not okay with that. Are you, Harry? Hermione?"

Hermione sat back again and drew her two best friends closer. Sighing, she responded in a tired voice. "I'm not really okay with it, Ron, but I don't have a choice. I can't resist this much longer, and I'm under a suppression spell. Snape must be going insane. And once the suppression charm fails, it's going to be all over. I just want you guys to support me, because I'm not sure that Snape will be any help at all."

"So we're just supposed to have a stiff drink waiting for you when you get back?" Ron asked with frustration, and Harry kicked his leg.

"No, Ron," Harry responded swiftly. "We're supposed to tell her that we still love her, you prat. And not act all jealous and protective."

Hermione looked between the two, and unexpectedly chuckled. "Well, I doubt a stiff drink would hurt, you know."

* * *

Of course, they were all again in the great hall, this time at dinner, when the tired, frayed spell finally sputtered and failed.

McGonagall's eyes went wide as she searched out Dumbledore's gaze at the table. The two of them had cast and maintained the spell, and they both felt it unravel. The headmaster was looking back in alarm, and with a subtle gesture of his chin, motioned for the old witch to see to their student as he turned to Snape.

McGonagall looked across the hall to see Hermione sitting in stillness, her two friends looking concerned as they tried to speak to her. She rose and approached the Gryffindor table to collect the girl and get her away from her classmates.

She glanced over her shoulder to see Dumbledore delivering the warning to the Potions Master, who was rising even before the words were out and heading out the teacher's door at a clip.

By the time McGonagall drew even with her three troublemakers, Hermione was trembling, tears running silently down her face. For the second time, McGonagall drew the curly-haired Gryffindor under her arm in front of all her assembled schoolmates and escorted the stricken girl out of the great hall, ignoring the concerned questions from Potter and Weasley. Again, she led Hermione out the main doors that the students used.

But this time, once out of sight of the other students, McGonagall set her mouth in an unhappy line and led the girl directly to the dungeons.

* * *

Severus poured a glass of whiskey with hands that he willed not to tremble and knocked it back his tight throat.  He didn't want to get drunk – the girl didn't need or deserve that – but he figured one drink might ease his high-strung nerves.

He didn't have to wait long for the knock on the door, but he hadn't expected to have to. She was in a pretty bad way by now. And besides, he'd felt her coming.

There was nothing dampening his awareness of her anymore, and he was having to steel himself from being overwhelmed by the turmoil in her mind and body. He grimaced. Every sleepless night that he'd lain up thinking of her... every tortured moment of having her in his classroom, but being unable to grab her, possess her... every melancholy evening consumed with unquenchable longing... all of that had been falsely denied to her for almost four years, and was crashing in on her in one traumatic moment. It was a truly terrible thought, and by the intensity of the agony that she was now feeling, it was every bit as bad as he'd thought it would be for her.

He opened the door to find Hermione trembling in McGonagall's arms. He stepped aside with a nod and gestured for her to enter his rooms, but she didn't move until the Transfigurations Professor urged her forward.

Abruptly she turned back, but McGonagall had stepped back and closed the door. Alone with her. He stood still and wary, watching her without expression on his face. Her heart was beating so hard that she felt like it would explode, her body was scorched by the heated blood surging through her veins with such fierceness that she could hear the rush. Her mind was racing with dozens of memories of the past four years, and suddenly she was simultaneously experiencing them all as they should have been... the need, the compulsion, the obsession.

He felt her fear that her knees were about to give way, and watched her stumble into the nearest chair, sweating. He still refused to move. She was wondering what the hell he expected her to do.

"I can't... stand this," she croaked desperately, clearly hoping to evoke some reaction.

"What do you want me to do?" He asked the question quietly, seriously, not with the biting sarcasm that she'd probably expected.

"Don't you feel this way?" she asked angrily, gripping the arms of the chair and fighting not to hyperventilate.

Snape studied the wall beyond her shoulder. "Yes," he replied simply. "For the past four years. I'm just good at hiding it." Only the tightness around his mouth betrayed outwardly how much that admission had cost him.

"We... have to," she said helplessly, collapsing bonelessly back into the chair, pulling her trembling knees up to her chest.

"Do you want me to touch you?" he asked grimly, wary of the revulsion that she was sure to feel at the very thought. She made a sound of pain deep in her throat and nodded miserably.

Snape moved past her, fascinated by her hyperarousal as he drew near her, and sat down on one side of the couch. He gestured for her to come to him, and quite suddenly found himself with a lap full of Hermione Granger.

There was no revulsion. Just gripping, indescribable desire. And he was finally touching her.

Finally touching the girl who had tied him into knots with her very presence, stripped him of his composure with a tilt of her head in class, reduced him to shaking with desire when her eyes fleetingly met his, provoked painful arousal when her body came within several feet of his. Her robes were wrapped around her uncomfortably, and she wriggled against him, trying to get as much contact as possible.

Her eyes were squeezed shut in shame. He'd expected revulsion, not shame. Suddenly he felt a flash of compassion for her, and he pulled her into him and, without thinking, plunged his hands into her hair.

Oh Hell and Hades. He'd hoped to handle this like an adult, but his resolution was dissolving in the face of the reality of her touching him.

Severus Snape had experienced both unrequited and requited love in his life, but nothing like the dreadful, constant pull on his mind and body and being that Recognition was. He didn't love this girl; he didn't _know_ this girl. But he needed her. And she was, gods help him, moaning and whimpering and writhing in his arms. And he had the perfect excuse to just take her; As McGonagall had pointed out, no one could hold anything short of rape against him when Recognition was at play. There was no need to court her, to care for her, just to possess her.

Snape growled and turned her in his arms and pulled her back hard against his front. He found her hands with his and twined his long fingers in hers, then wrapped both their arms around her midriff. He had spread his legs and pulled her between them, so that he was very effectively holding her trapped in this prison. With great force of will he brought his breathing back to normal, so that she could feel the measured rise and fall of his chest at her back.

She leaned her head back against his shoulder and began to cry. She refused to sob aloud, but he knew. She was in pain.

"Hold still, girl, and be quiet," he snapped. "I'm going to take the edge off, so we can both think a bit."

She continued to tremble and twitch in his arms, and he carefully arranged her arms so that he could hold both of her hands flush against her body in one of his. Luckily, she wasn't actually struggling against him, just jerking aimlessly with the pain and need that was the aftermath of the charm's failure.

Biting the inside of his cheek in an effort to concentrate, Snape slid a hand into her robes and fished through her clothing, scoffing at his frustration with her layers. He somehow found the hem of her skirt and hiked it up her thighs and she moaned loudly. The girl was actually wearing cotton panties, and he was visited by the self-mocking certainty that they were virgin white. She could have at least done him the favor of wearing something lacy or satiny or reasonably adult, but no.

She virtually shrieked as her hips bucked upward into the curve of his hand. "Damn it," he cursed, shaking his head as he found the waistband of her panties and slid his hand beneath it to encounter her damp curls.

Her panties were drenched through with her juices. Snape's erection began to throb painfully as his fingers slid between her slick folds.

He was suddenly visited by his own shame. The first time he had intimately touched a woman in years, and it was because she couldn't resist some magical imperative that was completely divorced from his inherent desirability. The shame didn't stop his fingers as he sought and found the center of her pleasure, and with practiced ease, began to stimulate her with the indirect, rhythmic pressure that most women needed.

She thrashed beneath his touch and he held her firmly, but the friction of her ass against his groin was driving him to distraction. She was sobbing out loud, incoherent language garbled into the noise. It was mere seconds before he felt her suddenly stiffen in anticipation, her verbalization suddenly dwindling into an extended whimper...

Hermione let out a full-voiced shriek when she began to come, and Snape could not restrain himself from pressing himself firmly into her backside, seeking his own stimulation. Her mons rocked against the palm of his hand in an unbelievably erotic gesture, and he brought his other hand up to her forehead and smoothed her sweat-damp curls back from her face. Her own hands, released, groped behind her for handfuls of his robes, which she tugged at furiously as she continued to twitch in orgasm.

He pressed his face into the sweet, hot space by her throat as he continued to create friction between them. He made no sound as he came except for one brief, strangled gasp at his peak. By now she was subsiding into him, gasping for air, and he finished silently, hoping that perhaps she hadn't even noticed his own climax.

In the next few moments, he manhandled the silent girl off of him and onto the couch, and disappeared to the bathroom to clean up the mess he'd made of his ensemble. When he returned she still lay limp, her eyes seeking him out across the room. He saw - and, well, felt - the pain that was still there, but she now had herself somewhat more under control. He poured a second drink and swallowed it, then with a murmured charm sent the bottle sailing across the room to land on the table before her.

Hermione stared at it, then at him, then took a swig straight from the bottle and spluttered. Snape, for his part, sat in the armchair and fixed her with a direct gaze. "Now, we talk," he proclaimed flatly.

 


	5. Contact

Hermione Granger tried to arrange herself into some semblance of dignity, but her nerve endings were still on fire. Snape sat across from her and looked at her, and she was struck by the absurdity of the fact that she had just had an orgasm at his hands.

_And he had come also._

He'd hoped she wouldn't notice, but every iota of her awareness was focused on this man with terrible clarity. He was in nearly as much pain as she from trying to fight this, but he was determined to approach the affair reasonably.

"I'm not sure what there is to talk about," she finally mumbled weakly once she'd managed to swallow the liquor he'd offered her. She found it impossible to meet his eyes after what had just transpired. Self-consciously, she smoothed her skirt and robes over her knees and demurely crossed her ankles.

And was shocked by the surge of arousal that her actions caused in her professor, which he promptly pressed down through sheer willpower.

 _Gods, his passion for her burned so hot_... Hermione was almost overcome by fresh desire. _Take the edge off, indeed. That worked for about seventeen seconds._

"Are you a virgin?" he asked suddenly in a voice harsh with some emotion, and she flinched.

"No... well, yes," she admitted in a small voice, her face flushing scarlet.

"No, well, yes?" he echoed inquisitively, raising one dark brow at her.

"We... Ron and I. We tried. But it didn't... it didn't work." She found that she could readily identify the feeling of guilt rising from her tumult of emotional pain. She wanted to force herself to look him in the eye as she said it, to try to read the emotion that had harshened his voice when he'd asked, but she just couldn't do it. She wanted to defend herself by insisting that she hadn't known... about Snape, that was, but she kept her mouth shut.

 _Circe, I'm discussing my sex life with Snape. But then, I'm_ initiating _my sex life with Snape. This is surreal. And I'm so fucking aroused it hurts._

It occurred to her that he wasn't being mean. Not exactly. Sort of curt, but not mean. She couldn't tell if he was relieved or annoyed that she was still a virgin, but barely.

"That wasn't what I meant to ask you," he muttered darkly, then cleared his throat. "What we actually need to discuss... first... is whether. Is whether you want a contraception potion." Hermione was entranced at the sight of her eloquent Potions Master fumbling, however briefly, with his words. Displaying, however well disguised, actual discomfort.

She tried to shake her head clear. "Um. I don't think I'm ready. For that."

"For a contraception potion, or for that which the potion is intended to prevent?" he asked, sounding wry.

"Oh! The latter. I'm sorry, Professor. My head, it's not... I'm not thinking straight."

He pursed his lips and idly examined the long fingers of his left hand. "While I have no desire to influence your decision, girl, I feel compelled to make sure that you realize the benefit of choosing to forego the potion. Under the circumstances, we could be sure to... satisfy the conditions of our unusual circumstances immediately - by which I mean conceive, of course - and you could quite possibly be done with your... your unwanted desire."

Hermione stared at him, heart hammering. It was all she could do to shake her head minutely.

He nodded curtly. "Then the potion, for now. We'll discuss the rest later." As he spoke, he summoned a vial with a wave of his hand, then directed it toward her.

 _How could he seem so damned calm?_ She knew that he didn't feel calm, and yet he certainly was managing to project that impression. Her own brain felt like it was swimming in hormones, all of which were demanding that she find a way to get this man's hands on her body again. Lust sang through her body, and its rhythm was mesmerizing and compelling. With shaking hands she lifted the vial and poured its bittersweet contents down her throat.

She felt a startling wave of want-need wash over him as he watched her tip her head back in what his body insisted was an invitation. When she lowered the vial, and her eyes, an electric sizzling snap sounded almost audibly as their gazes connected.

He cleared his throat again and tore his gaze away. He watched some point over her shoulder until he could speak again, while she just sat paralyzed with desperation.

"Soon... please," she said in barely-audible tones, and he nodded once in acknowledgment without looking at her.

"Soon," he agreed softly, then added in a more business-like voice, "But first, I want you to tell me if there's anything I can do to make this easier for you."

This certainly wasn't what she'd been expecting. He was asking? Snape hadn't said a kind word to her in almost seven years, four of which he'd been under the effects of a force compelling him to desire her. Her mind raced, trying to think if there was any good answer to his question. Easier for her? _All I want is to screw you_ , screamed some part of her overstimulated brain, _so if you want to be nice stop dragging it out_.

She shook her head in disgust at herself. "No, sir, nothing I can think of," she muttered weakly. "Just... it's just that I don't really know how to do this," she added reluctantly.

He nodded, flexing his fingers on the arms of his chair, and her skin rose into gooseflesh as if it had been her thigh that he was caressing. She fought to suppress a shudder as she stared at his hands in fascination, but she failed. Gods, but they were sexy. And the velvet timbre of his voice. And the apparent strength with which he'd held her captive against his body as he got her off--

Hermione groaned aloud, then blushed in embarrassment. Again their eyes locked and the heat flared between them, and suddenly Snape was coming up out of his chair.

_Oh gods, he's going to do it..._

"Come here, Miss Granger. I've had quite enough of this, and frankly, so have you," he told her calmly. He held out a hand to her, and somehow she found the coordination to reach up and take it, and he thereby pulled her onto her unsteady legs. He fixed her with a hot, glittering gaze. "I suppose you'd prefer that I dispense with the formality of foreplay this once."

She nodded as if dazed, scared that if she looked him in the eye when she was so close she'd actually be burned by the heat between them. Some part of her noted with shock that her hand was not the only one shaking... the tremble in his own was slight, but detectable.

She felt vaguely grateful that at least she was unnerving him as much as he unnerved her.

He pulled her into the bedroom and onto the bed. Just like that. No more talking, no seduction, he just led her into the other room and deposited her in the appropriate place. Hermione moaned again and, hot with shame, kept her knees firmly pressed together and her eyes squeezed shut.

It all happened very fast from there. Snape pushed her skirt up again, but this time he hooked his long fingers into the waistband of her cotton panties and jerked them free from her body. His movement were ungentle and calculated, but not harsh. Just... methodical. Goal-oriented. He tried nudging her legs apart once, but when she resisted in embarrassment, he just positioned himself on his knees below her and wedged one still-clothed thigh easily between her legs.

She whimpered as heat consumed her body, her nerves firing violently and randomly and causing her to spasm beneath his touch. She was becoming nearly incoherent with the dizzying, painful force of impressions from the past four years churning through her brain, and all she knew was that she needed something, she needed something. She was barely aware of what he was doing, only that he was moving her closer to what she needed but he hadn't yet given it to her, when she felt something warm and firm press between her legs.

With blinding clarity, she knew that that was what she needed, and jerked her groin up suddenly to try to sheath him.

He hissed warningly and positioned himself against her writhing body. She felt him drive into her slowly and against great resistance from her virgin sex, but he was relentless in his intrusion, and she sobbed, though whether it was from relief or agony was unclear even to her.

Slowly, he found his way inside of her and held himself there. He'd dreamed of this moment. Hated himself for it, but continued to dream of it. Inside Hermione Granger.

It was then that she began to convulse. Snape froze with her pinned beneath him; her eyes flew open wide and were glazed with shock. The tremors that had been moving through her began to truly wrack her body, and her hands clenched violently at his robes. Gritting his teeth, Snape pulled out of her and caught her wrists in his hands, concerned that she might hurt herself.

Her eyes rolled wildly in her head. "P-p-please," she stuttered in spite of a jaw nearly locked with tension. "D-d-don't st-stop."

"Miss Granger," he snapped, "get a hold of yourself." He maneuvered her hands over her head and pinned them to the bed, shifting his weight to the side so as not to crush her and holding her lower body down with one long leg. He wasn't really angry at her - McGonagall had made it clear to him how severe her reaction might be when the suppression charm failed - but he hoped that his sharp classroom tones might scare her out of this fit.

This wasn't made any easier by the fact that he was still aroused by all this contact with her, regardless of her current supremely unerotic state. It was as if there was direct wire running from the part of his brain that knew he was near her and his erection.

Tears and snot streaked her face, but there was really nothing to do for her. No potion he could give her. No way to undo all the compulsion that had been stuffed unresolved into the back of her psyche for years.

Snape stretched out his torso against hers and continued to hold her down. "S-snape, you b-b-bastard. I n-need you," she ground out.

"And I'm right here," he returned in as soothing a voice as he could manage. "Just calm down, child, and breath. We'll finish what we've started when you're ready."

The seizure continued for almost two hours, during which he held her flush to him and protected her from her own spasms. The intensity ebbed and waned, but he held her firmly throughout. He was still fully dressed and she naked, and at one point she settled enough for him to pull a blanket over her shaking form.

When she finally came down, Hermione found that all that terrifying tension had finally been purged from her body. Her head still felt cobwebby, but at least her brain wasn't spinning. Her entire body ached as if she'd been battered by dozens of angry bludgers, and Snape lay beside her, still holding her wrists, but eyes closed in rest in the wake of her fit.

"Professor?" she asked in a weak voice.

His eyes opened. His face was inches from hers, and his gaze seemed intense and discomfiting from this distance, but didn't turn her guts into knots as it had earlier. "Miss Granger," he replied smoothly, not releasing her or lifting the weight of his leg from over both of hers.

"I think it's over," she told him tentatively.

He nodded, but still didn't move. In fact, he said nothing, and she started to feel apprehensive.

"Do you need... do you need to finish with me?" she asked slowly, demurely, dropping her eyes from his.

"Oh, I think I've done enough damage, for now," he replied conversationally, and she raised her eyes again in surprise and saw the bitterness glinting in his.

"Damage?" she echoed hollowly. "This wasn't your fault."

He snorted and finally released her wrists, which she began to rub. He rolled away from her and lay on his back, gazing at the ceiling. After a moment it occurred to her that he wasn't going to elaborate, and she didn't know what else to say about it. Instead she suggested, "You could have used a body bind on me or something."

"I could have," he agreed in a flat voice. "I preferred to hold you myself."

The irresistible sexual drive for him had abated sometime, but she found that she still craved his touch, his presence. She wanted to move closer again, but didn't dare. She couldn't read him anymore - he was shut down tight - she just knew that he was near, and blocked off. She wondered if her own emotions were more opaque to him when the lust was temporarily satisfied.

Hermione felt awkward and foolish. She wrapped the blanket around herself and also turned to lay on her back. Silence reigned for a long while. It occurred to her absurdly that it was only mid-afternoon - only about three hours had passed since the charm had failed there at lunch.

The longest three hours of her life.

So what does one say to one's Potions Professor in the aftermath of losing one's virginity to him, when he didn't really want to take it?

He turned his head away from her now, and stared at the opposite wall as he spoke. "Miss Granger. I'm afraid that... I'm afraid that I do need you, now," he informed her tonelessly.

She looked over at the back of his head, could just see the profile of his cheek in the mid-afternoon light. "I guess my seizure, or whatever, expelled the effect for me, but not for you," she suggested timidly.

Suddenly she noticed that he was breathing very shallowly and his skin was even paler than normal. It occurred to her that maybe the lust had not yet abated for him at all, maybe he'd been silently enduring its full effect for the last several hours out of concern for her.

"Um... do you want my permission?" What did he need from her?

"To be honest, your permission seems moot, as I'm not sure I could withstand it if you denied me, and I'm fairly certain it wouldn't take much effort on my part to turn you into a willing participant whether you liked it or not." He delivered all of this in self-mocking tones. "So, in light of that unfortunately honest admission, I suppose it was more of a warning."

She found that his very words caused the echoes of arousal to stir deep in her belly, though she still felt far too wrung out to do anything about it. "Okay," she said apprehensively, feeling both vaguely fearful and excited.

Another several moments passed before he moved. Not long after she'd started thinking that perhaps he'd decided against it, he rolled suddenly and she found him once again over her on the bed, but this time he refused to meet her eyes as he propped himself on one arm above her.

Hermione lay still as he reached down between their bodies, wrenched her blanket from where it had become imprisoned between them, and then released his erection from the depths of his robes. His deft fingers slid over her lower belly and probed fleetingly at her center, checking to see if she was still ready for him. She murmured a bit and flushed as she realized how wet she still was.

This process was rather business-like now that the worst of the effects of suppression had passed for her. Snape slid into her body and she gasped and jerked a bit, but tried to stay still so that he could get what he needed. Oh - so - she was still capable of some - she hitched a bit - of some arousal. She bit her lip hard and rolled her head back, trying to hide her renewed passion from him. Clearly all he wanted was to be done with her, but god dammit, the man was turning her on again.

He stroked into her with a measured cadence, still looking down and keeping his hands on the bed. She _wouldn't_ thrash; she _wouldn't_ moan. He was just trying to get rid of this mad compulsion, and she knew she shouldn't interfere. Moments passed, and his motions picked up speed briefly, then he paused and stiffened. She wanted to see his face, but it was resolutely turned away from her. His orgasm was again silent, but she caught a glimpse of his grim expression as he pulled out and swiftly tucked his sticky sex back into his robes. This time he rose from the bed and headed straight to the bathroom.

Hermione glared at the wall and chewed her lower lip in embarrassment. She supposed that she hadn't been much of a lover, but then, he'd made it clear that he was only tolerating her because he had to.

 _He asked if he could make it easier for you._ That was true; he hadn't had to do that.

So she supposed now he'd send her back to her rooms and her life, and they'd meet again for a quick shag the next time the need got too distracting.

She hoped Harry and Ron would actually have that stiff drink waiting for her when she got back to Gryffindor tower. Because she was going to need it.


	6. A Doddering Old Man

Hermione found that she didn't want to discuss her experiences with either Ron or Harry. She felt ashamed and confused and discovered that she didn't feel secure enough to share her doubts with them. When she'd returned to Gryffindor tower, she'd found the two of them sitting up playing chess. Harry in particular had looked like he wanted to say something, to ask her questions, but was silenced by the expression on her face. She'd sat down and watched the rest of the game without comment, then the two boys had escorted her up the stairs to her room, each hugged her with real feeling, and then retired. Not a word had been said.

She had to admit, she was surprised at their perceptiveness.

She sat now curled into a worn chair in her room, a heavy tome in her lap but unattended as she lost herself in unhappy thought. Snape hated the force compelling him to want her, that was clear. She... she wasn't sure how she felt. At first, she'd been appalled at the entire situation. But now... well, how was she supposed to know how she would feel if she didn't have to want him? Did it matter? For the fact was, she had Recognized him, and so she felt drawn to him.

It was occurring to her that Recognition wasn't an outside force at all. It wasn't actually some will independent of hers that forced her to desire Snape... Recognition was something that happened between two people, and was a product of the two people, and thus wasn't artificial at all. Perhaps it was magical in nature, but it wasn't as if some third party had brewed a love potion and forced both her and Snape to ingest it. There was no outside consciousness forcing the two of them together, just their own desires. And if those desires looked different from the desires of those who hadn't Recognized each other, and if they were more insistent, did that make them false?

Hermione was starting to doubt it, but completely unsure as to where that left her. Snape obviously thought of this need as something not his own that was being forced upon him. It was clear that if not for Recognition, he wouldn't want anything to do with her.

* * *

Just to be polite, Hermione accepted the lemon drop. She never ate hard candy; her parents never would have had it.

Dumbledore settled into the chair opposite her and folded his hands comfortably atop his rich purple and gold robes. His long silver beard gleamed as if he had just brushed it with a hundred strokes; his tiny wire-rimmed glasses glinted orange in the flicker of the fireplace flames. His expression, which was usually either merry or grave, was actually rather neutral as he regarded his Head Girl. Expectant, perhaps. It was clear what he meant to discuss with her, but Hermione had no idea if she was in for recriminations or sympathy.

She half-shrugged uncomfortably and bit her lower lip as she gazed back at him.

"Well, my girl, you don't look too battered. I'm not sure if that means that Severus was gentle enough with you, or not as rough as you might have liked."

Hermione bit off a bark of outraged laughter and nearly choked on the candy nestled on her tongue. She must have looked absolutely incredulous... she couldn't believe what the Headmaster had just said to her.

At her astonished expression, Dumbledore chuckled good-naturedly. "A scandalous way to open an awkward conversation, I'm sure, but I think it would be most ridiculous for me to treat you like a child at this juncture, don't you, Miss Granger?" he asked, as if it were the most profound wisdom in the world.

Suddenly Hermione found herself laughing hard, and something tight and terrible loosened a bit in her chest. She just nodded at him through her watering eyes, and a sudden wave of relief washed through her. She wasn't in for recriminations or sympathy... Albus Dumbledore was offering her her first chance to speak freely about the absurd life she suddenly found herself leading.

"I suppose so, sir," she finally replied, wiping the corner of her eye carefully on the edge of her sleeve. "But then, what would be a _normal_ way to open such a conversation?"

"I confess that I don't know," he replied sagely, smiling at her mirth. "But if my innuendo has made you feel any less unhappy than you did when you walked in here, then it was worth sullying my reputation as an ancient old fuddy-duddy who couldn't conceivably know the first thing about--" and he looked around conspiratorially, as if someone might be eavesdropping, and lowered his voice, "what happens in the abandoned classrooms of Hogwarts."

Hermione smiled again, feeling strangely calmer now. A short silence settled over them while she collected her thoughts; Dumbledore waited contently, contemplating the flames of the fire with great interest as she thought. Finally she spoke. "Professor Dumbledore, I don't want the other students to know what's going on between Professor Snape and I."

The aged Headmaster nodded seriously. "A wise choice, I think, my dear, and one that I would have encouraged you to accept even had you been otherwise inclined. I've arranged to have your rooms connected to Severus's by the Floo, and while all of the staff is aware of the situation, they will all do their best to ensure that discretion is maintained."

She still felt a bit awkward... she couldn't get past the fact that the reason that they were having this discussion was because the Headmaster knew that she had had sex with her Potions Professor, and would again. She kept reminding herself that he also knew that she had been helpless to decide otherwise, and he wasn't treating her like a misbehaving schoolgirl at all, but like a... well, like a woman in a difficult, awkward situation.

She forged ahead. "So the other professors don't... don't want me expelled?"

Dumbledore did not belittle her tentative expression of concern. "No, Hermione, they do not. All they want is to make this unlikely situation as manageable for a good and well-liked student as it can possibly be."

"They don't... laugh? Or... or pity me?"

Dumbledore paused for a thoughtful moment before answering, and when he did, he spoke slowly. "They do not pity you, for I think they all know you well enough to know what you would think of their pity. Do they laugh? I would be lying if I said that no jokes had been made, but I can at least assure you that they have been at Severus's expense and not at yours. I hope that that does not bother you too much."

She actually found it in her to smile a bit at that. "He is a bit silly, with all his glowering and scowling, isn't he? I suppose I can see why it's a bit humorous for them to imagine him going into heat or something." She blushed at her forwardness, but reminded herself that Dumbledore had paved the way for frank discussion.

He smiled appreciatively. "I don't think that particular metaphor had occurred to them, but now that I see the accuracy of the parallel, I shall have to suggest it," he commented gently, and she giggled a bit.

"Hermione, is there anything else that I can do to accommodate your situation or to ease your fears? It's clear to me that there aren't many folks you can turn to for support, and for what it's worth, this doddering old man would be honored to be one of them." He spoke seriously, then added with a bit more humor: "Though neither would I be insulted if your hundred-something Headmaster weren't your first choice for advice on the, ahem, 'birds and the bees,' as I believe Muggles call it."

She chewed her lip again, gazing blankly over his shoulder. "Well. This might seem a bit esoteric, given all the pragmatic concerns of this situation, but I was wondering... do you think that Recognition is actually of internal or external origin?"

Suddenly Dumbledore's regard turned shrewd. "That's an interesting question, Hermione. At the risk of being utterly infuriating, I must answer your question with a question: what do you think the answer to that is?" He was looking at her with newfound respect and with interest.

She shrugged. "I really don't know. I mean, it certainly feels internal... I just have these feelings, you know? But then they seem like strange feelings, like I'm not sure I would have them... under other circumstances. But then, does it matter if I wouldn't? The fact is, they are my feelings." She looked a bit helpless. "Does that make sense?"

"To me, it does." He seemed suddenly solemn. "But do you think that it would make sense to Professor Snape? After all, isn't it his assessment of your conclusion about which you are concerned?"

She nodded, unnerved by the accuracy with which Dumbledore unearthed her true fear. "I don't think he would buy it. And I think he thinks it's all external, like it's something being forced upon us, instead of something happening between us." Suddenly she trailed off, embarrassed, and the Headmaster let another silence descend upon them.

Finally he replied, "All I feel I can truly tell you about your question, Hermione Granger, is that it is a very important one." 

* * *

The second time was really no better.

Only two days had passed. Hermione hadn't seen Snape in class since the beginning of the year, and had explained away her individual study in the subject as an advanced project. So at least she hadn't had to deal with that distraction. Seeing him in the great hall at meals was bad enough... the longing was a strange, steady pull that grew stronger throughout the day. By lunch of the second day, she was trying not to squirm in her seat or give herself away by too-frequent glances at the head table, where Snape was busily ignoring her existence.

By dinner, it was all she could do to hold up her end of the conversation with Ron, who was observing her distraction with an air of hurt. It was Harry who suggested that they leave early to get a head start on the evening's homework, and the two escorted her back to Gryffindor without comment on her state. Once there, instead of gathering their books, the boys took her to her room. She was surprised when, instead of leaving her at the door, they followed her in.

"You two can't come in here," she protested weakly.

"Hermione, every professor in this school knows full well that if there's one girl in Gryffindor who isn't dallying with other students, it's Hermione Granger," responded Harry pointedly. "Ron and I have discussed it, and this time you're not coming back to an empty room."

She looked to Ron and saw the determined expression with which he tried to hide the jealousy in his eyes. Harry sat in her chair and Ron on her bed with folded arms, looking for all the world like they couldn't be moved by Mobilicorpus.

She just nodded as she pulled down the box of Floo powder from atop her new fireplace and threw a pinch in the fire. With one last glance at her companions, she called Professor Snape's name and stuck her head into the green flames.

A green-tinged view of Snape's mostly-darkened rooms filled her vision, with the notable focal point of the room's occupant regarding her from behind the desk. "Come here, Miss Granger," he called without looking up, and Hermione didn't even pull her head back before stepping the rest of the way into the fireplace.

By the time that she completed her journey, Snape had risen from the desk and was approaching the fireplace with an impassive expression on his face. Hermione regarded him warily, willing herself to ignore the thrumming in her body that insisted that she close the gap between them herself.

She was shocked when he grabbed her face between his hands and lowered his head to kiss her urgently, then just as suddenly as she sensed his lips touch hers he jerked away from her and backed up, his hands upraised.

"I'm sorry," he snapped in strained tones, then took a deep breath and continued. "That was inappropriate. Just come with me." And he turned and swept into the bedroom.

Hermione followed in a daze. She had wanted him to kiss her. Couldn't he sense that? Maybe when he shut himself off so that she couldn't read him, he couldn't read her either. Confusion swallowed her again, as it always seemed to when she was in the presence of this complex man.

Once in the bedroom, Snape lowered the lights and gestured to the bed, careful to keep distance between them. Hermione, feeling foolish, pulled her panties from beneath her skirt, climbed onto the bed, and leaned back against the pillows with her knees slightly spread.

This time he shrugged out of his robes and draped them over the ornate footboard and approached her in his tailored pants and fine shirt. She tried to see how he could free himself enough to take her without pushing down his pants at all, but in the lowered light only saw him manipulate his clothing as he nudged himself in between her knees.

Oh gods oh gods oh gods. She needed this desperately and she wanted to reject the mechanical way that he was going about it. She turned her head sharply to the side so she wouldn't have to witness the reluctance and passionless concentration on his face as he went about his task.

"I'll be done with you quickly, Miss Granger," he muttered, and she wondered wildly if he meant the words to reassure her. They turned out to be true. Again she felt herself entered and taken, and Snape turned his face away also as he moved above her.

He didn't touch her. Didn't kiss her. Didn't speak. He was simply going to take her and send her back to her rooms.

Was this really what he wanted? She could feel his misery and discomfort seeping through the barrier he tried to maintain like a pervasive odor drifting from behind a closed door, but she had to assume that he was unhappy about having to have her in the first place, not about the unsatisfactory way that it was happening. Dammit, she wanted to scream at him. It was maddening, to want him so badly, to technically have him, and to feel as if she hadn't had him at all.

Anger ripped at her gut, and she resented her body for its arousal. Merely the friction of their bodies was about to send her over the edge, but the fact was she wanted his wet mouth locked on hers, the acknowledgment in his glittering eyes of who he was doing this with, his elegant hands learning the quirks of her body, and instead she was getting the most perfunctory penetration of her body by his. As she approached her orgasm her resentment built with it, and as she came she was suddenly possessed by rage to mutter through clenched teeth, "Hurry up already. Harry and Ron are waiting for me in my room."

He stiffened above her and froze momentarily, and Hermione was well aware of the flood of hot jealousy that he could not conceal. Ugly satisfaction welled up in her, which meant he would undoubtedly recognize that she'd been trying to hurt him. Suddenly he pulled out of her and rolled away to sit at the edge of the bed.

"Get out," he said softly, his painfully straight back to her.

She half sat up. "But you didn't... you didn't finish," she protested lamely, then berated herself. After all, what did she care?

"I can't see any reason why you should concern yourself with that," he growled dangerously. "Now get out!"

Hermione left her panties on his floor in her rush to return to her rooms. A blur of green and she was falling into Ron's arms as Harry asked if she was okay. Not more than ten minutes had passed, and the two looked shocked and very worried to see her.

Hermione sobbed into Ron's chest as Harry wrapped his arms around them both. "I can't do this, I can't do this," she nearly wailed, her fingers clutching convulsively at Ron's sweater. Harry made little shushing noises, and he and Ron exchanged a meaningful look over Hermione's head.

Harry shook his head in the negative, but Ron's eyes were pleading. Harry knew his still-besotted friend couldn't help but see this as a chance to finally find a way into the girl's affections. Harry's heart sank as he saw the potential for painful feelings all around, but he couldn't bring himself to completely deny Ron the hope that he saw blooming in his blue eyes.

It was with much regret that Harry slipped from the room and left the ex-lovers together. As the door slipped shut behind him, he heard Ron softly telling Hermione that she deserved better, and he heard the desperate sob that his comforts elicited from the unhappy Head Girl.

This was not going to turn out well.


	7. Matronly Advice

Severus Snape was not used to seeking out others for advice.  In fact, his plan was to obtain some without the object of his attention realizing that she was giving it.

He had some concerns about the likelihood of his success.

Hermes and Mercury and Osiris, he'd nearly lost his temper when Granger came out with that crack about those brats that she ran around with. The very thought made him hot with shame, even a few hours later, and he knew he had to get this absurd situation under some sort of control.

He quickly located Minerva McGonagall in the Restricted Section of the library, pouring over a volume on Transfigurations that had rather infuriated him in his inability to completely master it. Wonderful. He was feeling humble enough about trying to pry information from her, and now he had to be reminded that there was actually something that she was better at than he. Envy and humility and the acknowledgment of his own fallibility all in one night. These experiences did not suit him well, and so he decided in a fit of pique to open the conversation by demanding that she get out of his way.

A bit of a smile cracked the witch's very severe features. "Certainly, Severus. Please, let _me_."

Snape snatched a Potions volume off the shelf that he felt certain McGonagall could not have tackled in her most lucid moments and began flipping through and noting all the potions that she would have been sure to botch had she attempted them. McGonagall returned to her own research, frowning in concentration as she switched among several volumes shelved in the same area, trying to decide which ones to take back to her chambers.

Any other time he might have become quickly engrossed in the tome that he was holding, but today he rifled through its pages, trying to think of a way to bring up the topic of his colleague's favorite student. After a few moments McGonagall peered at him over the top of her book, her shrewd eyes shining over the tops of the matronish lenses that she wore. "You're not actually reading, Severus," she noted.

Oh, how he wanted to snap at her, but Snape did actually possess the ability to check his sour temper when there was actually a goal at hand. "Perhaps I'm distracted," he returned tonelessly, without looking at her.

McGonagall snorted good-naturedly and turned a few pages, frowning again as she noted something new, then snapped the book shut and turned to him. "It's just as well. I've been meaning to talk to you, young man."

Severus raised an eyebrow in her general direction. "I'd been supposing that you were plotting to accost me with a litany of opinions regarding the situation at hand with your most favored protegee," he agreed without interest, continuing to pretend to search for something in the book he held.

McGonagall put a hand on his forearm and pressed gently, urging him to lower the book. It was a touch that Snape would have tolerated from few, and he turned to regard his colleague with a look that spoke volumes. _"Are you sure you want to take such liberties with my person?_ " he nearly asked aloud, but let his expression convey the message just as clearly instead.

McGonagall's wise eyes searched his, and Snape actually relaxed minutely. She didn't look like she had meant her touch as a challenge. She waved her off hand and murmured a silencing charm that would ensure that they would not be overhead.

"Severus, I _am_ concerned, for both you and Miss Granger," she said primly, crossing her arms in the generous folds of her robes.

Snape reshelved the book he had picked up and turned to actually face her. "I would expect no less. Are you implying that I ought to do something in response?" he asked with a touch of acid, hoping that she'd think the question was an example of his usual snideness and yet answer it seriously.

"Well, to begin with, I wouldn't mind seeing the slightest indication that you are actually concerned with your student's welfare in any way," she replied snippily.

Snape snorted. "Though I know it's asking a lot, I must request that you try to refrain from this particular degree of foolishness, Minerva." He examined his fingernails. "The fact that I am not wailing on the Astronomy Tower or gazing forlornly at her during meals, does not mean that I am without concern for Miss Granger's best interests."

She scowled at him. "Has it occurred to you, you ridiculous... _wizard_ , that doing right by her might necessarily include letting her see the very fact that you wish to do right by her?"

"If you think that she is looking for a display of emotion from me, then I would suggest that you do not understand the nature of our current relationship. She has _Recognized_ me, not fallen in love with me, and it is my intent to make that as little of an inconvenience or burden for her as possible." Suddenly he sneered down at her. "Though why I'm justifying myself to you, I can't imagine. Perhaps the girl has addled my brain somewhat after all."

McGonagall was studying him with a very thoughtful look of concern. "Oh, Severus, is that really what you think is the best thing to do by her?" Her voice held a note of genuine pain.

Snape stared back, feeling startled. "Of course it is," he snapped quickly.

"And what do you intend to do when Hermione bears your child?" she asked with curiosity.

Snape drew a deep breath, definitely unsettled by this turn in the conversation. "Support her and the child financially, and stay out of her way when she falls in love and find someone who she wants to raise the child with." There was a note of steely determination in his voice that made it clear that he had deemed his _feelings_ on this course of action quite irrelevant.

"Have you and Miss Granger discussed this course of action?"

At that, he simply fixed her with his flattest gaze, and she nodded sadly. "That's what I thought.

"And is it with this attitude of _saving_ her from any possible entanglement with you that you've been approaching the time that you've spent with her thus far?" McGonagall drew herself up straighter and returned his glare.

"Minerva, you make it sound as if I am denying the girl something that she wants. In reality, I am refraining from forcing upon her something that she would resent," he explained slowly, as if she were the densest of children.

Their eyes locked in challenge for several long seconds, and suddenly Snape began to experience a very unpleasant sense of doubt about the assertion he had just made. Oh, this was not good at all.

"Severus, may I make a suggestion?" McGonagall suddenly asked gently, respectfully. Snape blinked in surprise and bit back an urge to use this chance to shut her down.

He took a slow breath, studying her. Calmly, he ground out the words: "Very well, Minerva. What do you suggest?"

"Consider for one moment the possibility that she needs more from you than your seed, your money, and your subsequent absence, and give her any indication that you'd be willing to offer it. And watch very closely to see how she responds."

Snape closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture that McGonagall recognized from the rare occasions when he curbed his unpleasant disposition in order to assert his powerful intellect unfettered. A long, heavy sigh issued forth from his lanky frame, and he nodded tiredly.

"I will consider it, Minerva. I promise no more," he said finally.

She nodded at that and tried to look satisfied, then suddenly her expression shifted. "You could have just told me that you wanted to talk to me about it, you know," she said suddenly, as if on a hunch.

Snape merely smirked at her as he took his leave.

* * *

Luckily for his dignity, he had exited McGonagall's presence and made it most of the way back to the dungeon when it happened. Snape froze in horror in the middle of the hall, disbelieving that this was occurring.

 _Again_. Now. After everything that had changed.

The stupid bloody _bint_. _What_ did she think she was doing?

Snape had charged back to his quarters and scattered a handful of Floo powder, grabbing enough to get him to Granger's room, when he suddenly froze for a second time.

What did he think _he_ was doing?

The rest of the Floo powder drifted to the floor as Snape stumbled into a chair. Shaking fingers roughly tried to rake his limp hair out of his face, to no avail. He could feel it. Her arousal. Mixed with confusion and resistance and anger and distress, yes, but she was aroused. Snape remembered the last time that he'd interrupted the two of them...

_"Well. Miss Granger. I suppose I expected no better of you."_

Snape's long fingers raked over his face, massaging his temples roughly, pressing into his eyes in an effort to relieve the pressure of his agony. His overactive mind conjured image after image of Hermione Granger lewdly engaging in various licentious acts with the youngest Weasley boy... Hermione whispering inflamed words in his ear... Hermione offering herself without resentment or disgust... Hermione abandoning herself to passion with the lover whom she'd actually chosen and wanted...

Snape's grip was ripping into the very upholstery of the arms of the chair where he had fallen.

...Hermione standing in front of him, pale and unhappy, quietly saying his name over and over until he finally tore himself from the torment of his visions to realize that their object was in his chambers with him.

"Professor Snape... don't you think it's time that we _actually_ talked?" she asked him timidly.


	8. Recognized

"Professor Snape... don't you think it's time that we _actually_ talked?" Hermione asked her distraught Professor timidly.

"Yes," Snape growled immediately, sweeping out of his chair and yanking her roughly against him, entangling her in his robes. " _After_ I've finally had you properly."

Hermione heard a tiny yelp issue forth from her throat as Snape's mouth closed over hers. Instant high-voltage electricity shot through every synapse of her brain, blowing most of them into incoherent ecstasy. Her fingers clutched convulsively at the heavy fabric of his robes and her knees gave way, but he gripped her upper arms with a bruising force that she barely noticed as he greedily claimed her soft, gasping mouth.

There was movement; Snape was dragging her across the floor, still roughly kissing her mouth, her jaw, nipping at her neck. Suddenly he shoved her up against the wall and pressed his long body against hers, pinning her there. Hermione threw back her head, offering her throat to him. He used his weight to hold her in place and began to tear at her robes to get to her body.

"Did you let him inside you?" he murmured angrily, pushing her sweater up and finding her breast with one elegant, strong hand.

Hermione just shook her head and groaned, pressing forward into his touch. His sensitive fingertips found her hardening nipple and tugged roughly at her as his mouth scraped over hers again.

"Is this what you were trying to do? Provoke me into this?" he asked in a voice harshened by desire, his hand sliding across her breastbone and finding her other nipple. He wedged his thigh between hers and pressed it against her pelvis, hard. Her hands snaked down and pulled her skirt out from between them, so that the thin fabric of her panties rubbed against the fine linen of his pants.

"Yes, sir, I think I was," she pleaded in a tiny voice. "I'm sorry."

"You wanted me like this, did you, Miss Granger? Hot and insistent? I tried to make it easy for you, girl, but now that you've gotten the reaction you wanted, you're going to have to live with it." His voice was a silky purr in her ear, and she shuddered, her hands pushing against his chest but her head still thrown back in invitation.

"You are _mine_ ," he growled in a tone darkened by threat. "Don't you dare touch anyone else without asking me, you witless little idiot. If you do it again, I'll spank you so hard that you won't sit down for a week."

Oh, this was _indescribable_. Each could feel the other's desire, and each was turned on by the other's arousal, leading to a dangerous feedback loop that was spiraling out of control. And then - that _threat_ \- she was embarrassed to hear herself moan loudly at the idea of belonging to him so intimately, to feel her juices soaking through her panties and dampening his slacks at the idea of him punishing her if she strayed from the burning intensity of his possession.

He drew back and his sensuous lips curled into a small, predatory smile. "Why, Miss Granger, I think that the idea of being spanked is _turning you on_ , isn't it?" He punctuating his question by tweaking her aching nipple, hard, and she responded by pressing her crotch hard against his thigh with all of her weight, nearly sending him off balance before he grabbed her again.

"Enough," he snapped, dragging her to the ground and thrusting one hand beneath her skirt. His long fingers gripped the drenched fabric of her panties and ripped them away from her body, leaving painful burn marks on her hips from the friction of the elastic waistband snapping free. She whimpered loudly and grabbed for him, her hands fumbling inexpertly at the waist of his slacks, only one thought in her spinning brain.

Snape joined her efforts and soon she felt his throbbing sex slide along the slippery inside of her thigh. The few seconds that he took to locate the core of her and thrust inside seemed to take forever as Hermione whimpered on the floor and grasped at him. This time his mouth closed on hers as he slid into her, and she felt their bodies finally connect in the hot, primal, needful way that she had been craving in every fiber of her being for four years.

* * *

She had no idea how long they lay side by side on the floor, panting, waiting for their fervor to subside.

Tentatively she rolled onto her side and pushed herself up on her elbow to look at her professor. His robes were open at the front and disheveled, though she noted with interest that he'd once again taken the time to tuck his sex away and fasten his pants immediately after he pulled free of her. His sweat-damp hair stuck to his pale face, his eyes were closed and his breathing even. After a few seconds he opened one eye and peered up at her.

"Miss Granger," he said dryly, as if by way of greeting upon passing in the street.

"Are you... okay?" she asked, not sure what else to say. The unbearable level of tension between them had finally been dispelled, but she still felt shy and intimidated.

"I assure you that intercourse does not render a wizard incapacitated or otherwise compromise his health. I'm merely catching my breath."

She almost laughed but decided against it, venturing a small smile instead. Snape didn't smile in return, but she thought that she saw a corner of his mouth twitch and he closed his eye again.

"Did I frighten you?" he asked neutrally.

Hermione chewed on her lower lip in worry. "Well... yes. But I didn't mind, exactly."

Snape finally opened both his eyes and looked at her thoughtfully. She found that having the full force of his concentration turned upon her was an intense experience, and she shifted uncomfortably, then added, "I'm sorry I provoked you."

His expression remained impassive, but his voice was forceful. "Don't for an instant believe that utter rubbish that I was spewing about your having provoked me, Miss Granger. I am a grown man, and _I_ am the only one responsible for managing my behavior. Though I _would_ advise you to believe the promises that I made about how I shall treat you if you let Ron Weasley - or anyone else - touch you again without my permission."

Hermione blushed but didn't know what to say. She would have guessed that this sort of possessiveness would have angered her, but that wasn't quite the effect it seemed to be producing.

"I guess this isn't just going to be a shag when we can't stand the tension anymore from now on," she ventured quietly.

He sighed, eyes fixed on the ceiling now. "I thought it was what you wanted."

Hermione gathered her resolve and reached out, putting her hand on his arm. "Thank you for trying to do what you thought I wanted."

Snape's gaze flickered to hers with surprise, and he snorted. "I'm willing to acknowledge that we have a claim on each other, Miss Granger, but do me the favor of not mistaking that for a declaration of love, would you?"

She jerked her hand away, but with stunning reflexes he raised one hand and caught her fingers in his. She tried to jerk away as he sat up to face her, but he held onto her.

"Miss Granger," he snapped, then gentled his tone. Her hurt was surely showing on her face, but it didn't matter as he could feel her pain and she his exasperation directly. "Miss Granger, this is entirely new territory for both of us and will require careful, thoughtful navigation. Now, I intend to start treating you as something more that that nest of ecstasy that you keep between your thighs, but I don't yet know what that is. I will try to curb my naturally surly temperament only if you attempt to subdue your dramatic impulses."

She glared at him sulkily and he let her pull her hand back into her lap. "I'd imagined that when we got to this point you'd be--"

"What? Sunny? Romantic?" He shook his head ruefully and rose to his feet. "I'm afraid that all the lust and infatuation in the world isn't going to keep me from being Severus Snape. All I can promise you is that I will try to keep the name-calling to a minimum. And, yes, that I will at least ask you what you want from here on out, instead of assuming." His voice trailed to a mumble. "Pity that that approach didn't work out better for me," he added to himself.

The Head Girl gazed up at him as he straightened his clothes and refastened his robes fastidiously. Suddenly self-conscious, she rearranged her skirt and sweater into some semblance of order. She hoped he'd give her some sort of clue as to what they were supposed to do now.

"Come, girl, it's time for a cup of tea," he said flatly, seating himself before the hearth and gesturing for her to join him. Hermione became newly aware of the surrealism of her situation as she sat opposite her surly Potions Master and picked up the steaming cup that suddenly appeared on the table between them. For a few moments she stared moodily into the amber liquid and let the spicy aroma soothe her; when she suddenly become aware that he'd been watching her intently she startled, and the ghost of a smile flitted across his severe features.

"You know, Miss Granger, this is as unreal to me as it must be to you," he ventured casually, and she felt a bit surprised at the unguarded revelation. "I am a recluse by inclination as well as circumstance, and the idea of letting anyone into my well-guarded domain is uncomfortable, to put it mildly. But given the situation, I think it's time that I give a thought or two to your comfort in the matter, and do what I can so that you don't feel... entirely unwelcome."

There was no hiding her relief, and Hermione couldn't help but smile. It was the first real opening he'd given her, and she had to use it to ask the one question that was plaguing her. Swallowing hard, she ground out: "Are you implying that it's not just because of who I am that makes you so, um, resentful about this situation?"

Snape didn't answer immediately, and the Head Girl began to seriously regret her query. He was studying her again, a contemplative look on his face. "My resentment has nothing to do with your identity, girl. Is that what you thought?"

She nodded minutely, her face red. "What was I supposed to think?" she asked so quietly that she could hardly hear herself.

The Potions Master nodded thoughtfully. "I see. Well, then, perhaps it is time for me to explain myself a bit. Let me start by saying this..." For a moment, Snape trailed off, collecting his thoughts. "Hermione Granger, were you ten years older and our circumstances wildly different, I cannot imagine a more desirable lover than you."

They stared at one another, her in shock, him calm. Snape raised an eyebrow, daring her to object, as she searched for words to respond. "Do you... mean that?" she finally choked out.

He nodded, expression still impassive.

"I thought that you hated me," she said weakly, passing one hand over her face, and was answered with a shrug.

"You make my job difficult, and you are one of Potter's best friends. Until the boy wonder finally got off his arse and finished Voldemorte off altogether, I was not free to show anything but disdain and disgust for any non-Slytherin in this school." He tipped his teacup to the side, watching its contents, and added as an afterthought, "Not that I've started composing hymns to your fearless leader since that fine day, mind you."

"Professor, what do we do when I get pregnant?" she blurted out suddenly, and Snape blinked at the change of subject and set down his teacup. He sat forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees and bringing his fingertips together in front of him. She felt him shutting himself off from her, putting into place the careful barriers that prevented her from knowing his emotions.

"We do whatever you say we do," he told her seriously, schooling his face to blankness but watching her closely for her reactions, as if he were very concerned about this topic. "I expect you to allow me to support you and your child financially without a fuss. And to make matters clear, 'supporting you' could quite easily include 'buying you a house,' 'hiring you a nanny,' and 'supplying you with whatever you might like,' without beginning to tax my accounts." He gazed at her, waiting for a reaction.

Hermione's mouth worked for a moment. "You're rich?"

He merely inclined his head.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "It's crass of me to seem so shocked. I just never considered... and I was worried... and, well, my family isn't... I don't know. I'm not sure how I feel about letting you--"

"I said 'without a fuss,' Miss Granger," he interrupted sharply. "I am willing to negotiate with you on some things around our relationship, and on many things around your child, but not in the least on this particular point."

Hermione winced, then collected herself. She was going to have to learn to stop acting like a chastised schoolgirl. This man would be the father of her first child, and no matter how intimidating he was, she needed to find a way to deal with him. "Will you--" She cleared her throat. "Do you intend to be involved in any other ways?" She reprimanded herself for the squeak in her voice as she asked it.

Snape dropped his gaze and looked at the floor between them, seeming almost unable to meet her eyes. "If you like," he responded flatly. She waited for an elaboration, but none seemed forthcoming.

Did he have to pick this particular subject to be so reticent? She could have used a little help, since she was terrified enough about her own role.

"Do you... do you _want_ to?" she somehow asked, then held her breath.

He closed his eyes briefly. "I don't know." A pause followed, in which Hermione's heart leaped into her mouth. When he continued, she could tell that he was forcing himself to elaborate. "That 'I don't know,' is not meant to disguise an answer of, 'I don't want to be involved and don't want to admit it.' I truly don't know how I feel about the prospect of becoming--of conceiving a child. I've never considered it before. I am not overjoyed, and I am not dismayed. Or perhaps--" And Snape swallowed, hard. "Or perhaps I am both."

Hermione's hand had moved of its own accord to her belly, and Snape quirked an eyebrow at her. "I hope you're not too disappointed that I am not weeping with joy at the prospect. Perhaps I'll come around before it's an issue," he added dryly.

Hermione shrugged feebly. "Perhaps I will too," she replied absently. When Snape's regard turned quizzical, she added: "I'm eighteen years old. Motherhood is not the foremost thing on my mind, and honestly, I've never even been sure if I would want it later on. But now that it seems like it's not a choice for me, I'm worried about my ability to do it well, when I feel so ambivalent about doing it at all. I mean, I feel like any child deserves to be really wanted, and I'm not positive if I can do that or not. What if I can't? I don't want to do _anything_ badly, ever, least of all this."

Suddenly Hermione became aware that Snape was listening to her intently and she blushed and dropped her eyes.

"No, don't do that," he said softly, and a shiver ran down her spine. "You know, you're really quite lovely when you forget that schoolgirl awkwardness of yours. You've got a fine mind and no small measure of ambition, and I respect that, Miss Granger. I really do."

Hermione's guts were liquefying, and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair. " _You_ make me feel like an awkward child," she said moodily, unable to meet the electric intensity of his gaze.

"You are, compared to me," he responded acidly, and she actually shivered where she sat. It seemed that the biting temperament that she had long resented in her professor actually turned her on in her new lover, and Hermione wondered if there was something wrong with her.

"I see our conversation taking a new turn, but before we diverge into more pleasurable territory, let me say this." His velvety voice raised goosebumps along her arms, and her brain was starting to swim in hormones again, such that she had to concentrate on what he was saying. "I don't know how we will work this out together, Miss Granger, but for the first time I feel some hope that we _will_ do exactly that... work this out together. Perhaps even in some mutually agreeable way, though I admit I can't yet imagine what that might be for either of us."

Hermione nodded, chewing on her lower lip. Snape waited for further response, but she just pressed her hands into her lap and glanced momentarily upward to meet his eyes with a pleading gaze.

Snape sighed heavily. "Bloody teenage hormones. Come here." Still too embarrassed to meet his gaze, she didn't notice the quirk that passed over his lips as he gestured for her to come to him. Nor the look of satisfaction in his eyes.


	9. Pomegranate

No matter how the Boy Who Lived asked, no matter what he did to let his best friend know that he was available to listen without judgment, he could not convince Ron Weasley to tell him what had happened that night between him and Hermione.

For her part, Hermione was looking worried but, Harry thought, somewhat less depressed. She told him that she believed that she and Snape had come to a considerably more livable agreement, and that she wasn't--he even had to whisper the word in his head--pregnant, or planning on becoming so anytime soon. She also expressed concern about Ron, but wouldn't say what had actually happened between them.

"If you could get him to talk to you about it, I'd be grateful," she'd said cryptically, ducking her head in a way that Harry knew meant that she felt guilty about something.

But the redheaded Gryffindor flatly refused to go to his Potions class, and was presently working his way through every reasonably attractive girl in Hufflepuff who was Fifth Year or up. Meals in the Great Hall were nearly intolerable with tension, with Harry desperately trying to bridge the gap between his two closest friends.

Things had never gotten this bad, even right after the two broke up. Harry found himself wishing that he wasn't an utter dunce when it came to relationships. He was well aware that he only managed to stumble through his own romance with Ginny because the girl was willing to put in the effort of figuring it out for both of them.

"Ron, Madame Pomfrey barely believed you on Tuesday! There's no way that she's going to give you a note to miss Potions again today," Harry tried to reason.

Ron shrugged without concern, carefully clipping the twigs of his broomstick. "Then I guess I'll get detention, won't I? And probably some house points off."

"You can't refuse to go for the rest of the year. There are over three months left!"

Ron refused to look up. "Then I suppose I'll fail Potions, and the Headmaster will have to decide whether to let me graduate or not."

Harry wanted to throw something in exasperation. Hermione might have been able to get the foolish prat to go to class, but Harry felt helpless to deal with this sort of obstinacy.

"C'mon, Ron, don't you think that this is a bit melodramatic? Are you really going to make some sort of point to anyone by failing Seventh Year?"

Ron's fingers tightened momentarily on his broomstick and he swore as he clipped a twig shorter than he meant to. "Go to class, Harry," he said tiredly. "If you keep standing here trying to argue me out of my childish antics, you're going to get detention too."

"If you know it's childish, why are you doing it?" Harry nearly yelled, and Ron finally looked up at him with liquid, hurt eyes.

"It was bad enough, losing her the first time," Ron rasped quietly. "But after she finally let me make love to her last week, it really tore me up to have her leap from my arms to go back to him because she could tell that he was a little jealous."

Harry gaped, astonished. What had Hermione been _thinking_? She'd had sex with Ron right before she finally worked things out with Snape?

"That's right. Now go to class. I'll take my detention when it comes," Ron insisted, separating out a problematic twig.

And Harry found that he was suddenly having a hard time coming up with reasons why Ron should stop acting childish. So instead, he went to class.

* * *

He finally got to ask her directly.

"Hermione, what in the bloody name of Merlin were you _thinking_?"

Hermione pulled away, the expression of guilt open on her face now. "I wasn't thinking, Harry, I should think that that would be clear! It was a stupid, idiotic, childish, hurtful thing to do and I did it. And now there's nothing in the entire world that I can possibly say to take it back, and on top of that I lied to Professor Snape when he asked me about it! What do you want me to do?"

Harry shook his head. The two of them stood in the middle of the hall between classes, younger students thronging around them but not jostling them. Harry and Hermione both got plenty of space in the hall these days, as did Ron and the other Seventh Years who'd been present at Harry's final defeat of the Dark Lord.

Now he pushed one hand through his mop of hair in exasperation. "I don't know, Hermione, I don't know. Shouldn't you apologize or something?"

"Apologize? Oh, I'm sure that would help." She lowered her voice to an angry hiss. "'Gee, Ron, I'm sorry we had sex. It was a lapse of judgment on my part.'"

It occurred to him that she was quite right; that wouldn't improve Ron's mood at all. "I thought girls were supposed to know how to handle this stuff."

She snorted derisively. "Harry, I don't think I've handled a single thing correctly yet." She stared at him, shifting her heavy armload of books, and suddenly giggled. "I really haven't, Harry. I make your fumblings with Ginny look like the suave seduction of Casanova."

Harry stared back, then laughed. "Yes, I guess you do." Suddenly he grabbed her in a rough hug. "I don't mean to be cross with you, but it's almost graduation and I feel like everything's falling apart between us. I always figured we three would walk away from Hogwarts into the sunset arm-in-arm on graduation day."

Hermione hugged him back awkwardly, trying to keep a hold of her books. "It's okay, Harry. I understand how you feel; what I don't know is how to fix everything. I've been doing some research in the library, but haven't found the book with the answer yet."

* * *

Severus Snape was nominally grading parchments at his desk. In actuality, he was writing fairly random criticisms and snipes on the top of each while he thought about the piece of fruit sitting on the corner of the broad desk.

Yes, he was really intending to do this. Had he not long ago learned to master the reaction, his palms would have been sweating.

She would Floo for him tonight. She never went more than three nights without visiting. Snape thought he might have made it through four, but was grateful not to have to put his hypothesis to the test. Even when she went three nights, by the last day he was spending far too much time shifting his posture or lurking behind his professor's podium so that no one would notice the effect that stray thoughts of her had upon him.

Recognition kept her coming back to him, but if what she wanted from him was more than the most mechanical and detached sort of compliance, he needed a more secure way to bind her to him. His blood could still hit a rapid boil in seconds at the mere thought of Ronald Weasley, and feeling jealous of a gangly eighteen-year-old git who had probably not yet discovered the female clitoris or learned how to control premature ejaculation was not exactly good for Snape's ego.

Hence the pomegranate.

He saw the flames of the hearth flare green out of the corner of his eye and heard her distinct voice softly calling his name. The girl still left him the semblance of privacy, never just sticking her head through without first confirming that he was there and available. As if he might be entertaining, or out of his chambers on a social call. As if she couldn't tell exactly where he was and what he was thinking about.

And she still called him Professor Snape. Of course, he'd not volunteered his name, either.

Neither of them addressed the other by name during their shared passion.

"Miss Granger, I'm here," he called, and watched her green head poke out of the flames. She looked sheepish and concerned, as if she might be intruding. She always did.

"May I come through?" she asked shyly.

"Actually, I would prefer to come to you this evening. Do you have any objections?" he returned absently, still marking parchments.

He refused to look up, but could vividly imagine her quizzically blinking into the silence that followed his suggestion. "Oh! Um... of course. I mean, no. No objections," she stammered, then disappeared into the flames.

Snape swept the pomegranate into a pocket of his robes and Flooed through to the Head Girl's chambers.

She was seated demurely on the edge of her four poster bed, looking ill at ease. Snape ducked out of the fireplace and glanced around with a critical eye. Her walls were lined with book-laden shelves, but her desk was relatively tidy. Her crimson and gold bed was neatly made up, and no clothes were strewn about. Snape, noting that it wasn't a day when the house elves attended to the students' rooms, deduced that she must be something of a neatnik, as he'd not given her time to tidy up before coming through.

Snape paced to the far side of the room and stood facing away from her, hands clasped behind his back, scanning the titles on one of her shelves. "I have something for you, Miss Granger."

Confusion. Apprehension. Flutterings of excitement. The girl was an open book to him. So why did he find her so damnably difficult?

"You do?"

With deft fingers he tilted a tome out from its place and glanced at the binding. "Yes. I've decided that I require certain assurances from you, and I am willing to provide certain other assurances in return. Fortunately, a handy solution presents itself. I am going to bind you to me tonight."

"H-how?" she stuttered. More apprehension than excitement now, though he was pleased to note that both had increased.

Back still to the girl, Snape produced his pomegranate and placed it carefully on the edge of the bureau to his left, where she could see it. He heard her intake of breath.

"That's a pomegranate." Her tone sounded almost accusing, but she was mostly just surprised, he knew. He smiled secretly at her shelves and thumbed another book.

"Tell me what you know of this fruit," he uttered as if bored, and began to page through her copy of a former year's Potions textbook. It was interesting having this conversation with his back to her, with only the awareness of their strange link and the sound of her voice to inform him of her reactions. By deliberately denying himself access to the wealth of cues he had learned to read from body language, he was surprised to discover that his mystical awareness of her state was even more acute than he'd previously realized.

"It... it's a lovers' fruit," she recited slowly. "Usually used to ensure promises of commitment or fidelity. Many don't realize that other promises can be woven into its flesh as well. Often used in powerful aphrodisiac and fertility potions. It used to be employed in wizard--in wizard wedding ceremonies, but fell out of favor about four centuries ago because of some of its more unpredictable qualities. Now lilies are usually used in its stead in the same nuptial rituals."

He nodded once, perusing the extensive notes in her text. Her script was quite fastidious. "All correct. I want you to eat this."

She was silent for a moment, then he felt her moving closer. His curiosity was piqued when he saw her delicate hand pick up the pomegranate out of the corner of his eye. Surely she was going to ask exactly how he had charmed it before she...

In the quiet, he heard her tear the fruit in half with her nails. He realized she was going to eat it, and he spun in a sweep of black robes, open amazement on his face.

She was standing, watching him, holding half of the broken fruit in each of her hands. The thick red juice ran freely over her hands, onto the sleeves of her blouse, and onto the carpet, but she seemed unconcerned. Eyes now locked on his, she raised her right hand to her mouth and sucked some of the glinting ruby seeds into her mouth. Snape heard the distinctive popping noise as she burst the seeds in her mouth and sucked their acrid, sweet juice down.

"Miss Granger," he said quietly, almost reverently. "Wouldn't you like to know what you're binding yourself to?"

She shrugged and popped more of the seeds into her mouth with her tongue. "To you," she answered, without seeming concern.

She looked nonchalant, but he could feel the thrill and the fear in her gut as if they were his own. She understood that she could be promising herself to any of a number of sinister things, and had decided to take the plunge.

Simply because he had told her to. He watched her, enthralled, as she began to work her way through the fruit, tearing away the lobes and rooting out the glistening, bloody seeds.

"You won't be bound until you eat it all," he whispered. "I can tell you what you're getting into before that."

Hermione turned and, with expert ease, spit a mouthful of seed pulp into the fire. She turned back to him and raised one eyebrow, then tore off another mouthful of seeds with her perfect white teeth. "If you like." Her face and hands were stained red with juice, and she presented an interesting image, standing there with a serene expression on her face and appearing as if she were smeared copiously with blood.

"I could tell you what I'm offering you in return," he continued.

Consuming a pomegranate was a slow process, but she was making significant headway. She repeated herself. "If you like."

Finishing the first half of the fruit, Hermione examined it closely for stray seeds, ensuring she had consumed them all. Calmly she tossed the destroyed shell into the fire and spit out another mouthful of seed pulp, then turned to her left hand.

And kept going.

Snape was transfixed by the sight. His erection throbbed painfully against his leg. He was well aware of her juices coating the insides of her thighs beneath her skirt, her hard nipples trapped beneath the thin cotton of her bra. Her determination and devotion seared him with their intensity. The silence stretched out as he watched her near completion of their little ritual.

"Stop," he barked hoarsely, as she started to suck out the very last of the seeds.

She froze, eyeing him curiously.

"If you eat that, you won't be able to bear penetration from anyone other than me until I release you. Any attempts at intercourse with another will result in intolerable pain. Also, you won't be able to orgasm at any hand other than mine... not even your own."

She waited. Snape swallowed. "That's it."

Without a sound, she tongued the last seeds into her mouth and popped them open. Snape groaned aloud and clutched the edge of the bureau, his knees nearly shaking with the force of his need.

One final time she turned and spat out the last of the seed pulp, then fixed him with her composed gaze. "And in return?" she prompted quietly.

A small, ragged laugh escaped him. "I thought a vow of fidelity would be pointless from me, as no one not under the compulsion of Recognition would want me. So instead I'm offering to let you into my life, to stop holding you at arm's length. You can have whatever commitment, whatever involvement you want of me, for yourself and your child. I cannot promise to be pleasant, but I can promise to be open."

She studied him thoughtfully. "You're offering a lot, for someone who refuses to admit that I might actually want those things. Aren't you convinced that if you let me know you, I'll discover you're really as revolting as you pretend to be?"

A small, self-mocking smirk crept over his face. "I'm assuming that if you can't obtain erotic gratification from anyone else, you'll find a way to live with it."

Hermione mirrored his smile. "My cunt for your heart, Professor?" she quipped, and he felt her apprehension at her own bravado. Snape inclined his head in acknowledgment, and Hermione slowly reached beneath her skirt and shucked her panties to the floor. Locking eyes with him, she raised her skirt and revealed the ginger patch of fur between her pale thighs.

She wiped her left hand over her mons, mixing the pomegranate juice that coated her fingers into the musky fluid that slicked her sex. Rich red smears streaked through the shiny lubrication covering her thighs and pearling in her hair.

Two strides of Snape's long legs closed the distance between them, and he plunged his hand directly between her legs and thrust his long fingers into the core of her. She rocked forward onto his hand and he steadied her with his left arm as he began probing her body insistently. His thumb found her clit and he moved with her to the floor as her legs collapsed. Spreading her legs wide, Snape leaned forward and began to clean the pomegranate juice from her body with swift flicks of his tongue.

* * *

"Professor..." They were tangled in the now-stained, sweat-damp sheets of her bed.

He murmured an acknowledgment.

"Ron and I... we... I let him," she stammered. "That night."

Snape sighed. "I know you did, you little fool. But don't worry; you certainly won't do it again. Now go to sleep."


	10. Graduation

It _had_ been four nights, this time, and by the time that Hermione found her way to his rooms Severus was shaking with need. He was at least relieved to note that she was in a similar state, and they abandoned all formalities as they tumbled to the couch together, his hands already working to free her from her garments, her hands plunged into his hair as she brought her mouth to his.

She had become less apprehensive about touching him now that they were bound by more than desire. Snape wouldn't have admitted to her how much that aroused him if his life depended on it.

Not that she couldn't tell for herself. Drat Recognition. He pushed the sour thought aside and enjoyed the feel of another human reaching out to touch him.

"Testing my patience, girl?" he growled in his silkiest voice, finding her tight nipples with his long fingers and tugging them into hard little peaks.

He was surprised when she didn't answer, but turned her face from his and continued to explore the nape of his neck. Was that... she was embarrassed?

"What?" he asked, raising one hand to her chin and turning it back to him. She closed her eyes and thrust her own hand down between them, yanking up her skirt and fumbling with his trousers.

Snape eased his groin away from hers to let her pursue her goal, but regarded the expression on her face with interest. What was she suddenly so shy about? "Look at me," he snapped impatiently, and Hermione just shook her head with her eyes still screwed shut as she somehow managed to free him from the confines of his trousers.

She thrust her body up to meet his, but didn't grasp his cock to guide it in. She'd not yet worked up the courage to touch him that intimately. Snape would like to have held out until he discovered what her strange behavior was about, but was frankly in no shape to deny himself for another minute. He shifted his hips appropriately, nudged the swollen head of his sex into place, and eased himself into her body.

She shuddered and groaned. Snape's fingers returned to her swollen nipples as he began to thrust, and she arched her back deliciously. She'd not made an instant's eye contact with him since coming into the room.

"Tell me," he insisted, then lowered his voice dangerously and added, "I'm not going to ask again."

Hermione turned her face away again and chewed hard at her bottom lip. Snape thrust hard into her, eliciting a whimper, and then froze there, buried in her to the hilt. His hand tightened on her breast, and she blinked up at him through her tousled hair.

"Can we do stuff other than sex?" she blurted suddenly.

The Potions Master gazed down at the Head Girl for several long seconds in which she waited with a look of grave nervousness. For a moment he was struck by the urge to chuckle, but stifled it. "Do you mean Parcheesi?" he asked seriously.

Hermione appeared dumbstruck by his statement. "Parcheesi?" she echoed weakly. Suddenly she began to giggle, which did interesting things to the muscles of her tight passage. "Did you just ask me if I mean Parcheesi?"

Snape nodded, shifting his position between her thighs to remind her of their previous occupation. She gave a strange little hiccup of pleasure in between her giggles. "I can't believe you even know what Parcheesi is!" she exclaimed with an edge of hysteria to her voice.

"I don't," Snape admitted without concern, and suddenly began to thrust into her again. He lowered his head and let his hair fall forward as he returned his primary attention to the event at hand. "I simply know that it's a Muggle pastime that seemed entirely inappropriate to our current activity. I suspect that I was making a joke."

"Really?" she breathed, clutching at the couch beneath her, though he could tell that her attention was wandering from the discussion.

Snape came down off of his elbows and let some of the weight of his torso rest across hers. Gods, her breasts strained against his chest as he pressed her down... his hands snaked down to find and encircle her delicate wrists as he nuzzled into the hot space of her throat and began to nip sharply at the sensitive, smooth skin of her neck. Once she was adequately distracted, Snape jerked her wrists over her head and pinned her to the couch, lifting his body up again to gaze down at her. He felt the surge of adrenaline and fear suddenly flood her hot little body.

"Professor," she breathed in alarm. "What--"

"Be quiet," he told her shortly, and her words trailed off. Snape was working to control his breathing, the tumult of his arousal rising to new levels as her lovely sex tightened around him in excitement. "I didn't actually think that you were talking about Parcheesi, silly girl."

His eyes locked on hers, Snape began to slowly shift downward over her, still holding her wrists tightly above her head. He slipped from her body but held her focus with his glittering gaze instead. Her eyes followed his with fixated fascination as he lowered his head over her breast.

Snape finally broke eye contact the moment after he closed his mouth on her right nipple, and her entire body jerked beneath him as if in surprise, as if she hadn't watched his excruciatingly slow approach. Her back arched hard as she thrust her tender breast into his mouth, and Snape responded by suckling the tight bud roughly as he let his teeth graze the sensitive coral flesh. She tugged and writhed ineffectually against his grip on her wrists.

Oh, this was a whole new world of moaning for young Miss Granger, it would seem.

Snape worked her nipple over thoroughly before moving to her other breast. It had been many years since he exercised his skills with a woman, but the one before him didn't have much as a basis of comparison, and his direct feedback on her levels of pleasure made it easy to figure out what touches worked best on her body. Not to mention the formidable force of Recognition on his side. Snape was surprised to discover that when he gentled his touch too much she began to writhe and whimper in dissatisfaction. It seemed that Hermione's body was wired to respond to the sort of intense stimulation that overwhelmed many women.

Bringing his teeth to bear with sharp, consistent, slow pressure got quite a response, and by the time that he moved on from that particular task, her nipples were a brighter pink and ached in the most erotic way imaginable. He wondered idly if he'd managed to leave any bruises.

Snape moved up again to gaze calmly down into her flushed face. She stared up at him with raw need written across her features. "Is that what you meant?" he asked coolly.

She nodded desperately, pleading for more with her eyes.

"Surely what I've just done is nothing more than even Ron Weasley figured out," Snape sneered, wedging his hips between her thighs again and finding his way back into her slippery body. He thrust into her and spoke with an air of boredom. "Tell me what else you're curious to experience, girl, and perhaps I shall indulge you."

Hermes' staff, the look on her face was priceless. Not to mention the sweet surge of her emotions, laid bare to him in her need. She was churning with excitement, but thoroughly pissed off at his nonchalant manner. Delicious.

She struggled with herself, tempted to tell him to bugger off, but mad with arousal from his ministrations. Her eyes flickered shut in shame, but when he tutted disapprovingly, she responded by returning her gaze to his face.

"Licking," she breathed, rising to meet him.

Snape paused and raised one eyebrow at her. "Licking?" he echoed, in a tone that might have been mild surprise or considerable distaste. "You want to feel my mouth on you--" and here he lowered her glance as if to her navel, or lower, then back to her face, "--there?"

Her breath caught in her throat at his words, and her nod was barely perceptible now.

"Well, that depends," he mused thoughtfully. "Are you prepared to return the favor?"

Another minute nod, her cheeks flaming with heat.

Snape nodded slowly in return. "What else? You might as well get it all out now, while I'm inclined to listen." He had slowed to an easy pace in his possession of her, one that he could maintain for a while.

"I don't know," she grated out uncertainly, catching his rhythm and speaking between pants. "I thought... you might know."

"It seems that Hogwarts' ambitious Head Girl is ready to broaden her horizons, is she? She thinks she might like a little spice in her sex life?" Snape was openly taunting her now, and Hermione was visibly struggling with her arousal and her frustration. He thrust with his words as he thrust with his body. "Well, if ' _licking_ ' is truly the kinkiest that you can come up with, my fine girl, then I have a few lessons to teach you that don't involve cauldrons or flasks, don't I?"

Oh, it pissed her off that she liked the arrogant way he was speaking to her. And she liked the fact that it pissed her off. It was one confused and overwhelmed young woman who exploded into a fierce orgasm that left bloody tracks on Snape's back.

Later, when he had recovered his breath, Snape brought her a cup of tea as she lay in his bed, and propping himself against the headboard, pulled her against his side, where she collapsed limply.

"I particularly enjoyed you tonight," Snape told her thoughtfully, stroking her bare shoulder. "Your passion was... impressive."

A sullen silence stretched out. "Do you tease me like that to be mean?" she suddenly asked.

He considered his answer carefully. "No, I don't. I tease you like that because the response that it gets out of you turns me on."

"Oh," she said in a small voice. He was aware of her churning confusion... she resented herself for her own reactions, he thought.

Snape lowered his head and breathed in the intoxicating scent of her. Binding her to him had had exactly the effect that he had been hoping for... now that he had a claim on her, in some senses, he felt more free to allow her glimpses of his well-guarded self. Before, telling her about his erotic preferences would have been an intolerably uncomfortable level of vulnerability.

"I am aware that I am not the lover that a teenaged girl must desire," he told her softly, calmly. "I am unpleasant, controlling, and insensitive. In ways I am sadistic. But while I cannot tell you that I don't enjoy your discomfort, I can tell you that the most erotic thing about your discomfort is that I know that it turns you on too. Making you blush and stammer is exciting to me, Miss Granger, but far more exciting is knowing that as you blush and stammer, you're still getting wet for it."

Hermione shuddered hard against him. It was the first time that he'd alluded so explicitly to the details of their sex life, and he felt her answering echo of arousal at the very thought of his arousal. "I liked... I liked how you held me. My wrists," she murmured shyly. "And I liked it when you... weren't so gentle. I don't know why. I just did. Is that... does that make me--"

"You _liked_ it because it was _hot_ , Miss Granger," Snape interrupted, sliding down the headboard to a more relaxed position and relishing the pain of the well-earned wounds in his back passing over the cool wood and soft sheets. "It doesn't make you anything other than libidinous." 

* * *

Snape schooled his face to impassivity, hiding his mixed feelings as he watched his lover of four months, Hogwarts' Head Girl, duck her head to receive the shawl that marked her as a graduate of the school.

He could not deny that something... substantive... had been developing between them in the time since the suppression charm failed. She still seemed like more child than woman to him, which meant that the intensity of his longing and need for her still unnerved him. But he had to admit that her composure and daring the night that she had allowed herself to be bound to him had first awakened in him the awareness that she wasn't just a child.

No, indeed. She was bright, quick-witted, thoughtful. She was ambitious and determined. She was certainly prone to Gryffindor sentimentality and melodrama, but was learning to temper those qualities, especially where he was concerned.

Snape studied her as she gave a tiny curtsey in acknowledgment of the audience's impressive applause. The graduation of the Boy Who Lived had brought spectators from around the wizarding world, and naturally Granger and Weasley received some small measure of the attention also. Her smile was both shy and proud, and he saw her eyes seek out her parents in the crowd.

She was no beauty, though when she put herself together for formal occasions, she could cut a surprisingly elegant figure. Her thick hair was still unruly, and her features too generous to ever be deemed more than pretty. She had developed a pleasant but spare figure over the years, and Snape thought that she was starting to walk and hold herself more like a woman every day.

She was looking to him, now. Snape allowed himself the ghost of a smile. His lover was the most brilliant and accomplished academic that Hogwarts had graduated in decades. He thought that he saw a blush creep across her face, and she inclined her head in acknowledgment. He returned the gesture.

Was he proud of her? Part of Snape resented the banal affection inherent in the thought, but he was at least honest enough to admit to himself that it was true. He was.

After the ceremony, he moved silently through the crowd, dodging reporters and following the inevitable trail of gushing sycophants toward Harry Potter. There he would find Hermione.

Sure enough, Potter stood between Hermione, who was flanked by her parents, and Ronald Weasley, who was surrounded by his redheaded array of family. Harry and Hermione were being fawned over by the rest of the Weasleys nearly as much as their own son, and Arthur Weasley had struck up a friendly conversation with the Grangers, who were looking a bit bewildered, as the Muggle families tended to at graduation.

None of the Weasleys seemed to notice that Harry stayed between his two best friends throughout the festivities, or that Ron and Hermione's eyes slid past one another as if the other were invisible. Snape thought it unlikely that Molly Weasley at least was oblivious to the tensions, but in motherly fashion she fretted over all three graduates equally.

Hermione watched his approach surreptitiously. They had agreed that her parents weren't ready to know the reality of their daughter's sex life, but she was both wary and excited as he neared. He had no intentions of disregarding her wishes, but in an uncharacteristically charitable gesture, thought that he might lay the groundwork to smooth future roads.

"Mr. and Mrs. Granger," Snape greeted smoothly, making sure to leave the apprehensive Muggles enough room that he wasn't looming over them.

"Mum, Dad, this is Professor Snape, my Potions professor," Hermione interjected dutifully, masking her nerves much better than she might have in the not-too-distant past.

Hermione's mother was a handsome, professional woman in a tailored suit; her father, a pleasant man with a well-trimmed beard and wire-rimmed glasses. Snape was relieved to note that they appeared perhaps ten years older than he... it was bad enough that he was technically old enough to be the girl's father, but at least her actual father was her lover's senior.

"Professor Snape," replied Michael Granger warmly, offering his hand. "Hermione's favorite teacher." His wife was smiling with genuine pleasure also.

Snape cocked an eyebrow at the Head Girl, who looked a bit appalled. Snape shook her father's hand and suppressed the ridiculous feeling that he was an inexperienced suitor seeking the approval of his sweetheart's father.

"I find that surprising, considering how spare I tend to be with praising my students," Snape returned without any bite, smiling slightly. "I actually wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge to you that you have a daughter of rare talent and ability, as I may not have seen fit to mention it directly to her in her years under my tutelage."

Francesca Granger rested her hand on her daughter's shoulder in a proud gesture of affection, and her husband beamed from Snape to Hermione. Hermione herself was staring at Snape in shock. "Well," Michael Granger huffed happily, "We've always known as much. We're very proud of Hermione."

"And well you should be," Snape agreed in his soft, deliberate voice. "I admit I've come to be fond of our Head Girl, and it's my hope that's she'll stay in touch with me - and the other staff - even now that she's no longer my student."

Neville Longbottom, who was standing nearby with his grandmother, nearly choked as he overheard Snape's expression of feeling. The Potions Master just managed not to send a glare in the boy's direction.

"Oh, Professor, our Hermione thinks of you as her mentor, you know. I'm sure she'll keep in touch, won't you dear?" Francesca Granger volunteered warmly. Hermione just managed to nod, and Snape allowed himself a quick smirk that only she would catch. Her heart rate had slowed as she gleaned his intent to introduce himself in as unthreatening a way as possible, and she seemed approving, if still a bit flustered.

"I must depart, but perhaps I shall have the opportunity to congratulate you again, should we all meet at Hermione's university commencement in several years," Snape concluded, and moved away through the crowd. He'd barely turned before he bumped into Madame Hooch, who'd been hovering nearby, trying to eavesdrop. He shot her a deadly glare, which she returned with a sunny smile as she hurried off to repeat his conversation with Hermione's parents to the rest of the staff.

* * *

"Hermione."

"Ron."

"Well... congratulations." Ron said awkwardly.

"Congratulations," Hermione returned.

The two stared at each other. The Leaving Feast for the families was commencing in the Great Hall, but Hermione had stepped outside for some air, and apparently her ex-beau had followed. She longed to say some words that would lead to a forgiving embrace, but unfortunately had no idea what they might be.

"Look," Ron said suddenly. "I'm never going to be happy over what happened, but you know, you haven't ruined me for life or anything. Harry's right: the three of us should leave Hogwarts together tonight." He was flushed but determined.

Hermione exhaled softly. "I never expect you to forgive me, Ron. What I did was inexcusable," she murmured, ashamed.

"Oh, don't beat yourself up anymore, love. You know, at some point I finally remembered that you did everything you could to discourage me from loving you every step of the way." Ron thrust his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders.

Hermione shuddered in the Scottish evening chill and pulled her robes around her. Her gaze wandered absently over the Hogwarts landscape. "It means a lot to me to think that you might not hate me forever."

"I dunno," Ron replied wistfully. "I guess I'm still angry, but I'm not as angry as I was. I planned on leaving without talking to you, but I'm just finding that I can't... it's not right. Let's at least leave together, knowing that we'll see each other again."

"Okay." She scrunched up her nose a bit against the threatening tears.

"I saw Snape talking to your folks after the ceremony. It looked like he was trying to be decent."

Hermione could hear in Ron's voice the effort that it took to admit that. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and thought to herself that he looked hurt but dignified. And quite handsome.

"I think he was," she agreed. "It's not like he's my boyfriend, but since he'll be the father of their grandchild someday, it seemed prudent that they at least know who he is."

"Merlin's balls, Hermione, this whole thing must seem as absurd to you as it does to the rest of us!" Ron exclaimed unexpectedly, but, she thought, with a humor that wasn't entirely ill. Hermione gave him a sidelong glance and nodded, smiling a bit, and was gratified when Ron returned her rueful grin.

"Oh, it does," she conceded easily. "And to Professor Snape, as well, you know."


	11. Thrust

He missed her.

Well, he was a wizard and she a witch, and it wasn't as if they couldn't spend exactly as much time together as they had when she was a student at Hogwarts. She was very busy with schoolwork at University, and most of his evenings were spent marking papers and devising new tortures for his students. She Flooed over to be with him a couple of times each week, and every so often he visited her.

It wasn't the same as when she'd been at Hogwarts though. In more ways that just the distance between them.

Snape's temper flared and he threw down his quill before he could break it again. One of the drawbacks of being able to throw around a Reparo charm whenever one wanted was that there was less reason to learn to curb one's more petty, destructive expressions of temper. However, that sort of lack of control sorely vexed Severus Snape, and so he simply tossed the quill onto his desktop and sat back with a sharp sigh.

The girl had left Hogwarts for the wider world. As was proper at that age. She was still in the thrall of Recognition, but the wider world had other things to offer, as well. Things other than greasy Potions Masters with chequered pasts and surly temperaments.

Was it right that he keep her bound to him?

Oh, she was bound to him by more than Recognition, more than that stupid pomegranate that she'd eaten. But she was also young and relatively inexperienced. And what if his foolish daydreams came to fruition? What if she came to him and begged to belong to him even more fully than she did, asked to be more to him than his Recognized bedmate, wanted to be his witch? What if she ever did want him for her wizard?

She'd never even really been with another man. She'd been fourteen when she'd first Recognized him, and eighteen when he'd first had her. Her only basis for comparison was a single aborted pity fuck with Ronald bloody Weasley.

Snape picked up his quill and held it lightly between his fingertips, regarding it as if it might hold the answers to his questions. With a slow, controlled gesture, he snapped it in half, then sighed.

"Reparo."

* * *

"I want to release you from the geas I put on you," Snape told her unexpectedly.

Hermione lowered her menu and fixed her lover with a startled gaze. They were at a Muggle restaurant near her university. She'd been surprised - pleasantly so - to discover that Severus Snape, former Death Eater and Head of Slytherin House, could move through the Muggle world without discomfort or apparent disdain. She thought that he looked particularly sexy in the Muggle clothes that he chose, and had been outright shocked to discover that he reacted with considerable passion to the sight of Hermione in slightly provocative Muggle fashions. She was wearing a slinky black dress with a daring slit, clinging bodice, and high-heeled sandals tonight, and he'd glared at her as if she were somehow misbehaving when he'd shown up to find her in that and insisting that they eat before resorting to their more-familiar activities.

"Pardon me?" she asked calmly, feeling off-balance.

He wasn't looking at her, and had a tighter leash on the emotions that he was projecting to her than she'd noticed from him in a long time. Continuing to study his menu, he repeated himself evenly. "I want to release you from the geas I put on you."

Hermione reached across the table and put a fingertip on the menu that Snape was holding, tipping it downward. He met her eyes, and she realized that she was suddenly sitting with the shuttered, tightly-controlled wizard that he'd been up until the night that she slept with Ron. This was as opposed to the somewhat less-shuttered, still-very-controlled wizard that she'd come to be familiar with in her bed since then.

"Why?" she asked simply. She'd learned the hard way with Snape that flying off the handle and jumping to conclusions always made things far more difficult.

Snape looked supremely unconcerned. "I want you to explore relationships with other men." He first raised a brow at her moue of surprise, then raised his menu for further consideration.

"Oh? And why is that, Professor?" she asked with a dangerous edge to her voice. Perhaps she'd picked that up from him, she reflected.

"You're at University," he commented idly, as if that explained it all.

"And?" she prompted.

"And?" he echoed. "And it's proper that you should have a certain degree of freedom."

Hermione drummed her fingers on the table, but Snape didn't elaborate any further. She reached over and pulled his menu from his hands, setting it on the edge of the table with hers. He raised his brow chidingly, but steepled his fingers before him and gazed at her expectantly.

"I _don't_ have a certain degree of freedom, Severus." It was still rare that she used his given name, and her voice was low and infused with emotion. "Perhaps you'll recall that I've Recognized you. You think that leaving Hogwarts has changed that?"

"Of course not, girl. I'm not trying to change anything between us. I simply want you to get some additional experience." Snape was eerily still as he spoke. "You've decided not to have a child until you've gotten your credentials, and I've agreed that we can sustain our present relationship while you do that. You know that you're going to be a mother within three years. Your time at University will be your only chance to, ahem, _sow your oats_ , I believe they say. You should do so."

"I see," she responded haughtily. "Sow my oats. Yes. What a fine idea."

His lips thinned with disapproval. "Sarcasm does not become you the way that it does me, Miss Granger."

"And acting like a melodramatic schoolgirl does not become you that way that it does me, Professor Snape."

He stared at her, and she began to regret her words. His point really was quite reasonable, some part of her brain reluctantly acknowledged.

"Fine," she snapped, picking up her menu again. "But not tonight. Release me next week."

Snape blinked. "Why wait?" he had to ask.

" _That's_ none of your business, Professor. Now what are you having tonight? The waiter looks impatient."

Later that evening, Snape was particularly forceful in claiming her. He tore her dress getting it off of her and bruised her lips with his greedy, demanding mouth. He made her beg him to come, and in that infuriating, manipulative, erotic way of his, made her wet over the idea of having to beg him. Then, he'd held her down and put his mouth on her and made her come until she was raw and screaming and begging him to let her stop. It was only after that that he'd allowed himself his own release, sliding into her now that she was so oversensitized that the stimulation was nearly unbearable.

He'd left soon afterwards, and Hermione had lain awake and stared at the grey shadows on the wall, contemplating his insistence on releasing her.

* * *

It was easy to find someone.

Hermione had picked out the stocky, fair-haired wizard drinking alone at the bar within minutes of entering the establishment. She felt his eyes on her, and when she met them, he had nodded with overt interest, but without leering too much. Watching him, she deliberately sat down alone and glanced from the unoccupied seat beside her back to him.

He took the hint.

His name was Gavin. He was fairly well-mannered, quite appreciative of the effort she'd put into her presentation, and just a bit shady. Also, he looked nothing like Snape.

He rented a room for them and didn't object to Hermione's lack of interest in foreplay. Within minutes he was finding his way inside of her.

She was determined not to convey the effects that it had upon her to her impromptu partner, but it was impossible to maintain the illusion of pleasure in the wake of the searing, burning, invasive pain that shot from her womb up her spine to her head when he entered her. She gasped, eyes watering, and nearly bit a hole in her lip to keep from screaming.

Gavin regarded her briefly, but she made no request for him to stop. His mental shrug obvious, he continued in his efforts, and Hermione turned her head in the low light and hope that the sounds that she could not muffle could be mistaken for passion.

She'd endured Cruciatus once, during the final stand against Voldemort, and then only for a handful of seconds. This was not as painful, she told herself through the red haze that clouded her vision, but the fact that it started at the core of her sex made the anguish that much more invasive.

Her vision swam in and out and her sweaty hands tangled in the sheets beneath her. All of her mental preparation and formidable discipline must have been paying off, for while Gavin seemed to have noticed that something wasn't quite right, it wasn't alarming enough to distract him from completing their consummation.

Snape was nothing but a gnat in the back of her brain at this distance, and she fought desperately to maintain the barriers that she'd erected before commencing her little scheme tonight. She knew now though that his attention was striving toward her, trying to ascertain what was wrong, and she was too distracted by trying to bear that pain to fully block him out

Gavin's muffled grunts increased in frequency, and she found herself chanting silently, desperately, " _Wontlastmuchlongerwontlastmuchlonger_..."

It had already been an eternity, hadn't it?

Circe, but Snape was pissed right now that he couldn't find her. Oh, he was seething.

The burning was worse now. Hermione's brain was melting, but still she didn't push the heavy wizard away, just writhed slowly in agony so intense that it was nearly paralyzing.

 _Wontlastmuchlonger_.

She thought she might have blacked out there at the end. She didn't even get the chance to employ the cliché that she'd so been looking forward to: "Was it good for you, baby?"

 

 


	12. Parry

"What possessed you?"

Hermione's eyelids fluttered open. The room was mostly dark, lit only by flickering light of the flames on the hearth. Luxurious satin sheets beneath her, the musty, comforting smells of Snape's chambers, of his bed. She was tangled in his sheets, still wearing her wrinkled robes. He sat by the fire, but he wasn't watching her... no, his face was turned toward the bare stone of the wall, and the orange glow of the fire lit the planes of his severe cheeks and forehead from beneath. He was still and introspective, and his voice was calm and tired.

She rolled away from him and didn't answer.

"Hermione?" he asked gently. "I want to know. What were you thinking?"

"Many months ago, you decided that I couldn't be trusted to be faithful to you, so you bound me to you with that stupid pomegranate. Now, you've suddenly decided that I _shouldn't_ be faithful to you, so you want to unbind me and you expect me to go out and find other lovers. I've had enough of your arrogance. I've had enough of you expecting me to shape my life to suit whatever you've decided it should be at the moment." Her voice was strangely without bitterness.

"I see. And do tell me how going out and finding a lover while still bound to me was meant to express that dissatisfaction."

She snorted. "You think I was trying to prove something to you? You're arrogant _and_ narcissistic. That wasn't about you."

"Of course. That fellow was clearly so irresistible that you couldn't wait a few days until I lifted the geas to drag him into bed."

Hermione sat up on her elbows and fixed him with a flat gaze. She did not respond.

"What?" Severus barked, slamming his hand hard against the arm of his chair. She winced, looking discomfited by his little display of temper. "What were you thinking?" he growled.

When she spoke, it was slowly, as if to a child. "I decided, Severus, that for once _I_ was going to do something because _I_ had decided to do it, and I was going to do it on _my_ terms and in _my_ own sweet time. You decided that I needed to go shag someone else. Fine. I did it. But on my terms."

He stared at her incredulously. "And your 'terms' are under a geas that would cause you intense pain? That's absurd."

"Absurd or not, it wasn't the circumstances that mattered. It was that I chose them, and you did not." Her voice remained even, her composure intact, which seemed to anger him further.

"Granger, you're an idiot," he snapped. "Bloody flaming damnation, girl, did you really think that you were going to prove how mature you are by putting yourself through agony?" His low, hissing tone actually sounded strained.

She lifted her chin and willed it not to tremble. "I knew that you would say horrible, hurtful things if you found it, and I won't try to dissuade you. Just know that I am capable of taking actions for myself, quite regardless of your restrictions and proscriptions."

Snape stood suddenly and whirled on her. She refused to wince again under his hot, angry gaze, and he turned again and began to pace across the floor. Every line of his posture bespoke agitation.

"I have not made a single decision here out of self-serving, capricious whim. I have been trying to do the right thing by you. I am _twenty years your senior_ , Hermione. Has it occurred to you that perhaps I really do know better than you?"

Hermione stood also, unwilling to be at a disadvantage any longer. "You may know better than I on many other matters, Snape, but you do _not_ know what is best for me better than I do."

He stared at her furiously. "If this is a demonstration of what you think is best for you, you'll have to forgive me for _failing to be persuaded_!" Snape's raised voice elicited the urge to shudder, but she squared her shoulders instead.

"I don't care if you're impressed or not!" she snarled, white fingers balled into angry fists, clenched at her sides. "And why should I? You don't want me, can barely put up with me, and will only tolerate me as long as I do everything as you think it should be done."

"You think I don't want you?" he rasped incredulously, finally pausing in his pacing and turning to face her, expression openly amazed. "You think I don't want you?" he repeated.

"Only because of Recognition, and you hate the fact that you've Recognized me. Every concession you've made has only been to make your life tolerable, not because you care for me one bloody whit." Hermione's voice was challenging and full of resentment.

"Are you trying to suggest that _you_ care for _me_ , Miss Granger? Perhaps that's the message that you were trying to get across when you shagged Ron Weasley, eh? Yes, quite dense of me to have missed it!" He took an angry step toward her, and she took a wary step back in turn.

"I've never tried to hide the fact that I actually care about you, Snape, but since I know that you don't want it I try to avoid throwing it in your face. If only you would do me the same favor, and avoid throwing in my face the fact that you _don't_ care!" Hermione crossed her arms over her chest and resolved not to be backed up any further.

"You... pardon me?" he sneered angrily. "You've never tried to hide the fact that you care about me? What are you on about, you fool! This isn't about love, this is Recognition. Don't tell me that you fancy yourself in love with me all of a sudden!"

She closed the space between them in two angry strides and raised her arm to smack him... hard. She was shocked to suddenly find her wrist frozen in the air in his unmoving grasp.

Their eyes locked, black to brown, both blazing with anger. Snape's grip tightened, and the fine bones of her wrist protested, but neither of them broke the tableau.

"What, if not love, do you think that Recognition _is_ , you great bloody idiot?" she growled softly in his face.

Snape's eyes went wide, and he staggered back from her. "If not love?" he echoed. "It's not... it's a compulsion to breed," he stammered. His entire posture had changed, and Hermione saw something that she could not previously have imagined... Snape was cowering from her words as if frightened.

Suddenly she felt a surge of power, and she stood fully upright, pondering his confusion and anger with a clear head. "A compulsion to breed? And why should that not be called love? What do you think love is, if the desire to conceive a child together doesn't qualify?"

"This is... this is the stupidest conversation I've ever been involved in," he tried to snap, but his normally velvety, measured tones were weak with uncertainty. He leaned, shaking, against the wall and wrapped his arms around his torso as if trying to hold himself up. When his eyes briefly met hers, she saw his fear.

And knew that he was afraid of her.

Afraid of the feelings that she elicited from him.

She wasn't the only one afraid of her lover.

Hermione felt elated. His fear and panic suddenly became as clear to her as an ancient Babylonian text on which she had just cast a powerful translation charm. Her own fear was no longer concealing her access to his emotions, and suddenly compassion and concern for him came to life in her. Suddenly she realized that she had a direct line to all of the parts of him that his unpleasantness was designed to conceal.

Not that that unpleasantness was an act... no, it was as genuine as the things that it was meant to conceal. As genuine as his sadism and cruelty. As genuine as his fear and self-doubt. As genuine as his brilliance and his intolerance for thick-headedness and his thirst for knowledge. As genuine as his rigid sense of honor and commitment to unattainable standards. As genuine as his keen wit and his snarkiness and his desire for solitude and privacy.

All of those things fit together to create the man who was Severus Snape. The man that she had Recognized. The man whose child she needed to carry. And therefore, in a very real sense, the man who she loved.

And she realized that all of the games that they'd played so far had not been false, but had been a different kind of love than any that she'd expected. With that understanding, she smiled, remembering the times that he'd made her cry, the times that she'd made him angry, the possessive rages and the binding and the pain of her rebellion and the fact that it had all made her feel close to him, but in a way that didn't make any sense with the Harlequin ideas of love that she'd grown up believing.

This time, when Hermione closed the distance between them, it was without fear or trepidation. Snape eyed her with real wariness, but she just placed a cool hand against his cheek, where she had meant to slap him a moment ago.

"It's all right, Severus," she told him calmly. "We don't need to call it love if you don't want to." 

* * *

Snape lay by her side, feeling slightly dazed, and watched her sleep.

He still didn't understand what had transpired between them. She had done something incredibly stupid by sleeping with that ugly little wizard, of that he was certain. And yet, somehow, that had led to her tapping into a new... what? A new part of herself? A new understanding of her world? He just didn't know.

But she was more powerful now than she had been before. His mind worked overtime on the problem. Shagging that wizard had been stupid, but... somehow it had been what she needed? That didn't seem right, but Snape was now sharing his bed with a witch in her own right, instead of merely allowing a schoolgirl to sleep there.

Why did all of the turning points in their relationship seem to revolve around his witch having sex with another man? Was that an indication that he was handling things badly? It didn't seem right, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out what he should have done differently. He hadn't been fooling himself when he'd said that he had made all of his decisions out of concern for her welfare. Some other concerns had factored in, of course, but none of his decisions had been purely selfish.

She turned onto her back, making sleep sounds, and Snape propped himself on one arm and studied her face in repose. The staff spent no small amount of time discussing which of their dunderheaded students would grow to be formidable witches and wizards, and from their very first year there'd been no argument over Hermione Granger. Harry Potter possessed more raw power than she, but the older a wizard got the clearer it became that the best among them were not necessarily the most mystically potent. Dumbledore himself was thought of as the most powerful wizard in the world, and Snape knew that it was wits and insight, not raw magical force, that made that true. Yes, Potter had had the sheer magical power, and Weasley the integrity and loyalty... and Granger? His witch had been the clever one. The combination of the three had brought about the downfall of the most powerful dark wizard in the world.

But Snape knew his biases. Given a choice between raw talent, loyal character, and sharp intellect... as far as Snape was concerned, Hermione Granger was the most powerful of the three.

And she, somehow, wanted to be with him. His mind still shied from that word she had used... love had had little meaning in the life of Severus Snape. But he understood now - and he hadn't before - that Hermione no longer thought of Recognition as a burden. That Hermione really did want more from him than his seed, his money, and his absence while she raised her child.

He reached out and brushed a stray curl from her forehead. His feelings for this creature had become alarmingly complex in the year since he'd first claimed her body.

He was not a man prone to declarations of love, and he doubted that he ever would be. And his version of that outrageous state that other men called love was more fiercely possessive, more violent and hungry and cruel, than any other witch had ever been interested in living with.

" _Finite incantatum_ ," he whispered softly, and smiled a small, rueful smile as he felt the traces of the Pomegranate geas unravel from her with a near-audible sigh.

He shrugged his shoulders, feeling the proof of her own violent passions there, the angry red gashes across his shoulders. She'd bitten his chest as well, as the outline of her now-perfect little teeth was clear above his left nipple. No one would believe it of the studious, prissy little bookworm who had once lectured a new generation of Marauders on the necessity of following school rules.

He suddenly realized that Hermione had opened her eyes, and was looking up at him, studying him in turn.

He looked impassively down at his lover. "We can call it love, if you want to," he told her in his velvety near-whisper, the faintest edge of derision to his tone.

She smiled secretly. "No, let's not, for now," she whispered back, now undeterred by that hint of a sneer in his voice.


	13. Epilogue

It was the deadest hour of night when Hermione shot upright in bed.

Snape, always a fitful sleeper, was open-eyed and had cast lumos before she even caught her breath.  Quickly ascertaining that nothing was amiss in their environment, he extinguished the light and turned back to his lover, whose sudden alertness had flooded his own veins via the powerful mystical bond that connected them.

"Hermione?"

The years had not made him into a warm man.  She didn't mind.

"It's just happened," she reported in a slightly dazed voice.

He reached out to touch her, somewhat hesitantly.  "You've conceived?" he asked quietly.

She glared at him in the darkness, acutely aware of his sudden apprehension, no matter how well he masked it.  "Don't blame it all on _me_ , Severus."

He lay back down and pulled her against him.  Their bodies naturally found the well-practiced fit between them... her arm resting on his chest, well above the spot over his solar plexus that irritated him, his legs entangling in hers in such a way that she wouldn't start kicking him as soon as she drifted back to sleep.  "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it happened right away.  It's taken all of my potions making skills to convince your impatient womb not to conceive before now."

"My Contraception Master," she murmured teasingly.

"Lovely," he returned, then lay in silence, listening to her breathe.  Minutes passed, but she wasn't falling back to sleep, and he could feel their two sets of churning thoughts mingled in his own head.  He steeled himself - he still had to, sometimes, to let her see his vulnerabilities, never mind that she was aware of them whether he liked it or not.  "Hermione?"

"Mmm?"

Another silence, but she didn't press him.  He took a breath.  "What did it feel like?"

She smiled secretly against his chest. 

* * *

"Hermione Granger!" he barked fiercely, as if she were a second-year caught sneaking into his private stores.  She turned to regard him calmly, unperturbed by the wash of his intense irritation.  Her gently swollen belly and benign expression imbued in her an earth-mother dignity that made it difficult for him to continue to speak to her as if she were a child.  "It's four o'clock in the morning!"

Her home was a comfortable one, and her laboratory well-appointed.  Snape still maintained his quarters at Hogwarts, and the two pretended that each lived in their respective spaces and not... well, not together.  Never mind that they slept in the same bed every night.

She put down the flask that she was holding and consulted the clock.  "Why, yes, Severus, you're quite right.  Four o'clock it is.  Good job!"

Ohh, _that_ didn't improve his temper.  "You may not give a passing damn for your own health, you foolish bint, but perhaps you'd failed to notice that you're responsible for the health of another living being now!"

"Oh, it's only a Snape," she said dismissively.  "They all have the temperaments of manticores, anyway.  A few late nights isn't going to make her any more sour."

Only silence greeting her snipe, and Hermione looked at him again.  He was staring at her with his stoniest expression, and she sighed heavily and turned away from her research.  Crossing the room, she rested her head against his shoulder, and he placed his arm stiffly around her and began to lead her up the stairs.

"Tell me, lover mine, what mad force in this universe decided that _you and I_ were two humans who particularly needed to become parents?" Hermione asked wryly.

"If you figure it out, be sure to let me know," he returned softly.  "My mother must have spent a _lot_ of late nights, because I can think of some remarkably cranky words to direct at such an entity."  They'd come to know each timbre of the other's voices and each quirk of the other's temper even without the unusual awareness that Recognition granted them, and Hermione knew that their cynical commentary was just their way of hiding their apprehension.

* * *

Snape calmly regarded the wrinkled, ugly red baby resting in Hermione's steady arms.  Her name was Aglaia Granger.  Outwardly he looked calm, anyway, but there was no way to fool the witch to whom he was bound.

Hermione looked up at him wearily.  "Would you like to hold her?"

Snape hesitated, then reached for the child wordlessly.  Hermione placed her in his arms, silently coaching him in the correct way to support Aglaia.  Snape was grateful for his lover's quiet, subtle direction.  The child settled into his arms, swathed now in both her own blankets and his voluminous robes, and Snape looked down into her face.  Her hair was wild and thick and dark.

When he finally spoke, his voice was hoarse.  "Hermione..."

"I know," she interrupted him softly.  "I know."

Snape continued to study his daughter.  Suddenly he lowered himself heavily onto the edge of Hermione's bed, and the tired witch leaned forward, her hand familiarly resting on his shoulder, her body pressed intimately against his back, and gazed at Aglaia with him.  He turned his unshaven face slightly, and their eyes met.

"I didn't know," he said cryptically.

She nodded in understanding, letting the meaning-laden pause stretch out.  "I suppose we'll make mistakes," she mused finally.

A short, harsh laugh, and Aglaia stirred in his arms.  Her eyes opened briefly and fastened on his chin, then she burped and drifted off again.

"How could we not?" he asked his lover wryly, then turned to position their daughter between them.

"We'll make them together," Hermione told him firmly.

Their eyes met again, and then his dropped back to the bundle nestled in his lap.  A long silence descended as both examined their thoughts.

"I really believed that you would take her and leave," Snape said suddenly, without looking up at her, then added, in a pained tone completely unlike his usual smooth baritone, "I still believe it."

"I know," she said again, searching his impassive expression.  "But I won't.  You know that I still want you."

He shook his head in disbelief.  "But is that the Recognition, or is it me?"

Hermione smiled tiredly.  "You know that I've long since stopped caring whether there's a difference, Severus.  I told you that I'd handfast you, warts and all."

"I have no warts," he returned stiffly, one tentative finger reaching out to stroke Aglaia's soft face.  As his fingertip brushed her cheek, she turned her little red face blindly in that direction, instinctively trying to suckle.

She smirked.  "It's fine; I don't mind if you don't answer the question."

Snape's expression became, if possible, even tighter.  "I wasn't aware that there was a question to be answered."

Hermione reached up and stroked Snape's stubbled cheek lightly, in a tender gesture oddly reminiscent of his own toward Aglaia.  His shoulders tensed, then deliberately relaxed again.

"And after all these years, and all the times that we've seen each other stripped and bare," she intoned quietly, "you still find it difficult to accept my intimacy, my affection for you."

His eyes locked on hers, as if it were important.  "And what if I always do?" he asked her gravely.

"I shall love you regardless, and know that you love me, Severus.  It doesn't even matter whether we are lovers or not anymore... you can never stop being my daughter's father, you know."

He nodded slowly, thoughtfully.  "I would rather continue to be lovers, also," he ventured uncomfortably.

"And husband and wife?" she prompted, stroking her daughter's plump arm absently.  "That was the question, after all.  You kept putting me off, thinking I'd change my mind, but she's here now, Severus, and we ought to be a proper family for her."

He nodded again, his gaze still caught up with hers, and she smiled softly.  His expression turning wry, he suddenly said, "Only if you'll still allow me to throw you around the bedroom and terrify you."

She, in turn, remained straightfaced.  "Only if you continue to pretend to believe that that still intimidates me the way it did when I was eighteen."

He scowled at her, and she leaned forward so that he could feel her warm, sweet breath on his neck.  "Don't worry, my dear, you can still intimidate me when you really try."

Suddenly Snape chuckled.  "Oh, give it up, Hermione.  You know that you're safe from me for several months, and by then I'll have dreamed up all kinds of new evils to inflict upon you."

They shared a knowing glance, then returned to contemplation of Aglaia, who chose that moment to start making the unhappy snorts and hiccups that surely proceeded a formidable cry.  "She's wanting to nurse," Hermione informed him sagely, pulling their daughter against her and uncovering one of her milk-swollen breasts.

Snape watched in fascination as Hermione coaxed Aglaia into suckling properly.  The little girl continued to fuss momentarily, then settled against her mother's breast.

"Weasley will have a fit," he commented absently, continuing to observe the process of mother and child.

Hermione's attention didn't waver.  "Probably," she answered.  "Harry will take care of it, like he always does."

Snape nodded, no longer surprised at the vehemence with which the once-abhorred Boy Who Lived defended the Potions Master's affair with Hogwarts' former Head Girl.  "I'd like for them both to act as my attendants," he told Hermione.  "Albus will have to preside over the handfasting, of course, and he's the only one who I'll want there for myself.  So someone else will have to stand up for me, and I'd like it to be those two."

Hermione quirked an eyebrow at him.  "That would mean a lot to them.  And to me."

"And your parents?" he asked her.

She sighed.  "Aglaia's birth did a lot to soften their disapproval, like I thought it would," she observed, with an edge of hurt still in her voice.  "And I imagine that your finally making a proper witch of me will do the rest of the trick.  They may never adore you, but I think that they're finally willing to admit that you do right by me."

"That will do, for me," he returned, smiling to himself as Aglaia squirmed against Hermione's breast.

"And for me," she agreed reluctantly.

* * *

Hermione was surprised to find the house dark when she Apparated home.  She and her husband had been looking forward to a night alone for several weeks, and it'd taken her longer than she expected to get Aglaia settled in with Ron and Harry.

She rubbed her neck as she made her way to the bedroom, shrugging her robes from her shoulders and hanging them meticulously in the wardrobe, wondering where Severus was.

"Hermione."

The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she turned.  He was standing framed in the doorway, his face hidden in the shadows of the darkened room.

"Severus," she replied, suddenly feeling a bit nervous.  He was still wearing his robes, she noted with a strange trepidation.  She could feel his heat.  Not just physically.  She could feel him in her brain.

"You made a certain comment, the day that we agreed to handfast," he purred dangerously, not moving into the room, just blocking the doorway, arms crossed.  "A comment that I've remembered well."

Hermione cast back almost a year in her memory.  "Mm-hm," she agreed vaguely, trying to appear nonchalant as she edged away from the wardrobe, toward the center of the room.

Snape glided smoothly into the room, and she suddenly, jarringly remembered that her daughter's enraptured father was also a formidable wizard with a penchance for rough sex.  Now why was that suddenly coming as a surprise?  Wasn't that what this evening was all about?

Her heart was starting to race, and she found herself automatically backing away from his threatening advance.  He knew exactly the effect that he was having on her.

"You said that I could still intimidate you, when I really tried," he reminded her silkily, and she shuddered.

"I... I think that I remember saying that, now that you mention it," she agreed haltingly, as her husband loomed over her.

"And you, my darling wife... did you know that you still elicit in me a raging desire to own and possess you, body, mind, and soul?"

Hermione put her hands lightly on his chest, savoring the feel of his fine robes beneath her sensitive fingertips.  She surrendered to the delicious feelings of submission that the tenor of his voice awakened in her gut, the tantalizing arousal that the force of his severe masculine presence awakened in her sex.  "I'm not the child that I was when I first elicited that desire from you, Severus," she whispered hoarsely.  "I'm no longer so easy to possess."

He smiled hungrily in the darkness.  "I consider that an improvement," he snarled softly, his hands wrapping around her upper arms and holding her tightly against him.

"And do you still think that you're capable?" she challenged rashly, lifting her chin.

A low growl was her only immediate answer... but the rest of the evening provided the proof.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, during a different phase of my life and under a different name. By which I mean about 2005 or `06.
> 
> I stopped writing fic for many years, and have just returned in the past year. I am fortunate beyond all measure to have had a muse back then, who is still my muse and best friend now after all these years. She asked me to upload some of my best-remembered old fic since I'm writing and publishing again.


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